They shifted on the branches, muttering and raising their wings. But a moment later Salmakia leapt up to join the Chevalier, and called out:
“You are quite right. Everyone should have a task to do that’s important, one that brings them honor, one they can perform with pride. So here is your task, and it’s one that only you can do, because you are the guardians and the keepers of this place. Your task will be to guide the ghosts from the landing place by the lake all the way through the land of the dead to the new opening out into the world. In exchange, they will tell you their stories as a fair and just payment for this guidance. Does that seem right to you?”
No-Name looked at her sisters, and they nodded. She said:
“And we have the right to refuse to guide them if they lie, or if they hold anything back, or if they have nothing to tell us. If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and learn things. We shall make an exception for infants who have not had time to learn anything, but otherwise, if they come down here bringing nothing, we shall not guide them out.”
“That is fair,” said Salmakia, and the other travelers agreed.
So they made a treaty. And in exchange for the story of Lyra’s that they’d already heard, the harpies offered to take the travelers and their knife to a part of the land of the dead where the upper world was close. It was a long way off, through tunnels and caves, but they would guide them faithfully, and all the ghosts could follow.
But before they could begin, a voice cried out, as loudly as a whisper could cry. It was the ghost of a thin man with an angry, passionate face, and he cried:
“What will happen? When we leave the world of the dead, will we live again? Or will we vanish as our dæmons did? Brothers, sisters, we shouldn’t follow this child anywhere till we know what’s going to happen to us!”
Others took up the question: “Yes, tell us where we’re going! Tell us what to expect! We won’t go unless we know what’ll happen to us!”
Lyra turned to Will in despair, but he said, “Tell them the truth. Ask the alethiometer, and tell them what it says.”
“All right,” she said.
She took out the golden instrument. The answer came at once. She put it away and stood up.
“This is what’ll happen,” she said, “and it’s true, perfectly true. When you go out of here, all the particles that make you up will loosen and float apart, just like your dæmons did. If you’ve seen people dying, you know what that looks like. But your dæmons en’t just nothing now; they’re part of everything. All the atoms that were them, they’ve gone into the air and the wind and the trees and the earth and all the living things. They’ll never vanish. They’re just part of everything. And that’s exactly what’ll happen to you, I swear to you, I promise on my honor. You’ll drift apart, it’s true, but you’ll be out in the open, part of everything alive again.”
No one spoke. Those who had seen how dæmons dissolved were remembering it, and those who hadn’t were imagining it, and no one spoke until a young woman came forward. She had died as a martyr centuries before. She looked around and said to the other ghosts:
“When we were alive, they told us that when we died we’d go to Heaven. And they said that Heaven was a place of joy and glory and we would spend eternity in the company of saints and angels praising the Almighty, in a state of bliss. That’s what they said. And that’s what led some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer, while all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never knew.
“Because the land of the dead isn’t a place of reward or a place of punishment. It’s a place of nothing. The good come here as well as the wicked, and all of us languish in this gloom forever, with no hope of freedom, or joy, or sleep, or rest, or peace.
“But now this child has come offering us a way out and I’m going to follow her. Even if it means oblivion, friends, I’ll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We’ll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we’ll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.
“So I urge you: come with the child out to the sky!”
But her ghost was thrust aside by the ghost of a man who looked like a monk: thin and pale, with dark, zealous eyes even in his death. He crossed himself and murmured a prayer, and then he said:
“This is a bitter message, a sad and cruel joke. Can’t you see the truth? This is not a child. This is an agent of the Evil One himself! The world we lived in was a vale of corruption and tears. Nothing there could satisfy us. But the Almighty has granted us this blessed place for all eternity, this paradise, which to the fallen soul seems bleak and barren, but which the eyes of faith see as it is, overflowing with milk and honey and resounding with the sweet hymns of the angels. This is Heaven, truly! What this evil girl promises is nothing but lies. She wants to lead you to Hell! Go with her at your peril. My companions and I of the true faith will remain here in our blessed paradise, and spend eternity singing the praises of the Almighty, who has given us the judgment to tell the false from the true.”
Once again he crossed himself, and then he and his companions turned away in horror and loathing.
Lyra felt bewildered. Was she wrong? Was she making some great mistake? She looked around: gloom and desolation on every side. But she’d been wrong before about the appearance of things, trusting Mrs. Coulter because of her beautiful smile and her sweet-scented glamour. It was so easy to get things wrong; and without her dæmon to guide her, maybe she was wrong about this, too.
But Will was shaking her arm. Then he put his hands to her face and held it roughly.
“You know that’s not true,” he said, “just as well as you can feel this. Take no notice! They can all see he’s lying, too. And they’re depending on us. Come on, let’s make a start.”
She nodded. She had to trust her body and the truth of what her senses told her; she knew Pan would have.
So they set off, and the numberless millions of ghosts began to follow them. Behind them, too far back for the children to see, other inhabitants of the world of the dead had heard what was happening and were coming to join the great march. Tialys and Salmakia flew back to look and were overjoyed to see their own people there, and every other kind of conscious being who had ever been punished by the Authority with exile and death. Among them were beings who didn’t look human at all, beings like the mulefa, whom Mary Malone would have recognized, and stranger ghosts as well.
But Will and Lyra had no strength to look back; all they could do was move on after the harpies, and hope.
“Have we almost done it, Will?” Lyra whispered. “Is it nearly over?”
He couldn’t tell. But they were so weak and sick that he said, “Yes, it’s nearly over, we’ve nearly done it. We’ll be out soon.”
TWENTY-FOUR
MRS. COULTER IN GENEVA
As is the mother, so is her daughter.
• EZEKIEL •
Mrs. Coulter waited till nightfall before she approached the College of St. Jerome. After darkness had fallen, she brought the intention craft down through the cloud and moved slowly along the lakeshore at treetop height. The College was a distinctive shape among the other ancient buildings of Geneva, and she soon found the spire, the dark hollow of the cloisters, the square tower where the President of the Consistorial Court of Discipline had his lodging. She had visited the College three times before; she knew that the ridges and gables and chimneys of the roof concealed plenty of hiding places, even for something as large as the intention craft.
Flying slowly above the tiles, which glistened with the recent rain, she edged the machine into a little gully between a steep tiled roof and the sheer wall of the tower. The place was only visible from the belfry of the Chapel of the Holy Penitence nearby; it would do very well.
She lowered the aircraft delicately onto
the roof, letting its six feet find their own purchase and adjust themselves to keep the cabin level. She was beginning to love this machine: it sprang to her bidding as fast as she could think, and it was so silent; it could hover above people’s heads closely enough for them to touch, and they’d never know it was there. In the day or so since she’d stolen it, Mrs. Coulter had mastered the controls, but she still had no idea how it was powered, and that was the only thing she worried about: she had no way of telling when the fuel or the batteries would run out.
Once she was sure it had settled, and that the roof was solid enough to support it, she took off the helmet and climbed down.
Her dæmon was already prizing up one of the heavy old tiles. She joined him, and soon they had lifted half a dozen out of the way, and then she snapped off the battens on which they’d been hung, making a gap big enough to get through.
“Go in and look around,” she whispered, and the dæmon dropped through into the dark.
She could hear his claws as he moved carefully over the floor of the attic, and then his gold-fringed black face appeared in the opening. She understood at once and followed him through, waiting to let her eyes adjust. In the dim light she gradually saw a long attic where the dark shapes of cupboards, tables, bookcases, and furniture of all kinds had been put into storage.
The first thing she did was to push a tall cupboard in front of the gap where the tiles had been. Then she tiptoed to the door in the wall at the far end and tried the handle. It was locked, of course, but she had a hairpin, and the lock was simple. Three minutes later she and her dæmon were standing at one end of a long corridor, where a dusty skylight let them see a narrow staircase descending at the other.
And five minutes after that, they had opened a window in the pantry next to the kitchen two floors below and climbed out into the alley. The gatehouse of the College was just around the corner, and as she said to the golden monkey, it was important to arrive in the orthodox way, no matter how they intended to leave.
“Take your hands off me,” she said calmly to the guard, “and show me some courtesy, or I shall have you flayed. Tell the President that Mrs. Coulter has arrived and that she wishes to see him at once.”
The man fell back, and his pinscher dæmon, who had been baring her teeth at the mild-mannered golden monkey, instantly cowered and tucked her tail stump as low as it would go.
The guard cranked the handle of a telephone, and under a minute later a fresh-faced young priest came hastening into the gatehouse, wiping his palms on his robe in case she wanted to shake hands. She didn’t.
“Who are you?” she said.
“Brother Louis,” said the man, soothing his rabbit dæmon, “Convener of the Secretariat of the Consistorial Court. If you would be so kind—”
“I haven’t come here to parley with a scrivener,” she told him. “Take me to Father MacPhail. And do it now.”
The man bowed helplessly and led her away. The guard behind her blew out his cheeks with relief.
Brother Louis, after trying two or three times to make conversation, gave up and led her in silence to the President’s rooms in the tower. Father MacPhail was at his devotions, and poor Brother Louis’s hand shook violently as he knocked. They heard a sigh and a groan, and then heavy footsteps crossed the floor.
The President’s eyes widened as he saw who it was, and he smiled wolfishly.
“Mrs. Coulter,” he said, offering his hand. “I am very glad to see you. My study is cold, and our hospitality is plain, but come in, come in.”
“Good evening,” she said, following him inside the bleak stone-walled room, allowing him to make a little fuss and show her to a chair. “Thank you,” she said to Brother Louis, who was still hovering, “I’ll take a glass of chocolatl.”
Nothing had been offered, and she knew how insulting it was to treat him like a servant, but his manner was so abject that he deserved it. The President nodded, and Brother Louis had to leave and deal with it, to his great annoyance.
“Of course you are under arrest,” said the President, taking the other chair and turning up the lamp.
“Oh, why spoil our talk before we’ve even begun?” said Mrs. Coulter. “I came here voluntarily, as soon as I could escape from Asriel’s fortress. The fact is, Father President, I have a great deal of information about his forces, and about the child, and I came here to give it to you.”
“The child, then. Begin with the child.”
“My daughter is now twelve years old. Very soon she will approach the cusp of adolescence, and then it will be too late for any of us to prevent the catastrophe; nature and opportunity will come together like spark and tinder. Thanks to your intervention, that is now far more likely. I hope you’re satisfied.”
“It was your duty to bring her here into our care. Instead, you chose to skulk in a mountain cave—though how a woman of your intelligence hoped to remain hidden is a mystery to me.”
“There’s probably a great deal that’s mysterious to you, my Lord President, starting with the relations between a mother and her child. If you thought for one moment that I would release my daughter into the care—the care!—of a body of men with a feverish obsession with sexuality, men with dirty fingernails, reeking of ancient sweat, men whose furtive imaginations would crawl over her body like cockroaches—if you thought I would expose my child to that, my Lord President, you are more stupid than you take me for.”
There was a knock on the door before he could reply, and Brother Louis came in with two glasses of chocolatl on a wooden tray. He laid the tray on the table with a nervous bow, smiling at the President in hopes of being asked to stay; but Father MacPhail nodded toward the door, and the young man left reluctantly.
“So what were you going to do?” said the President.
“I was going to keep her safe until the danger had passed.”
“What danger would that be?” he said, handing her a glass.
“Oh, I think you know what I mean. Somewhere there is a tempter, a serpent, so to speak, and I had to keep them from meeting.”
“There is a boy with her.”
“Yes. And if you hadn’t interfered, they would both be under my control. As it is, they could be anywhere. At least they’re not with Lord Asriel.”
“I have no doubt he will be looking for them. The boy has a knife of extraordinary power. They would be worth pursuing for that alone.”
“I’m aware of that,” said Mrs. Coulter. “I managed to break it, and he managed to get it mended again.”
The President wondered why she was smiling. Surely she didn’t approve of this wretched boy?
“We know,” he said shortly.
“Well, well,” she said. “Fra Pavel must be getting quicker. When I knew him, it would have taken him a month at least to read all that.”
She sipped her chocolatl, which was thin and weak; how like these wretched priests, she thought, to take their self-righteous abstinence out on their visitors, too.
“Tell me about Lord Asriel,” said the President. “Tell me everything.”
Mrs. Coulter settled back comfortably and began to tell him—not everything, but he never thought for a moment that she would. She told him about the fortress, about the allies, about the angels, about the mines and the foundries.
Father MacPhail sat without moving a muscle, his lizard dæmon absorbing and remembering every word.
“And how did you get here?” he asked.
“I stole a gyropter. It ran out of fuel and I had to abandon it in the countryside not far from here. The rest of the way I walked.”
“Is Lord Asriel actively searching for the girl and the boy?”
“Of course.”
“I assume he’s after that knife. You know it has a name? The cliff-ghasts of the north call it the god-destroyer,” he went on, crossing to the window and looking down over the cloisters. “That’s what Asriel is aiming to do, isn’t it? Destroy the Authority? There are some people who claim that God is dead al
ready. Presumably, Asriel is not one of those, if he retains the ambition to kill him.”
“Well, where is God,” said Mrs. Coulter, “if he’s alive? And why doesn’t he speak anymore? At the beginning of the world, God walked in the Garden and spoke with Adam and Eve. Then he began to withdraw, and he forbade Moses to look at his face. Later, in the time of Daniel, he was aged—he was the Ancient of Days. Where is he now? Is he still alive, at some inconceivable age, decrepit and demented, unable to think or act or speak and unable to die, a rotten hulk? And if that is his condition, wouldn’t it be the most merciful thing, the truest proof of our love for God, to seek him out and give him the gift of death?”
Mrs. Coulter felt a calm exhilaration as she spoke. She wondered if she’d ever get out alive; but it was intoxicating, to speak like that to this man.
“And Dust?” he said. “From the depths of heresy, what is your view of Dust?”
“I have no view of Dust,” she said. “I don’t know what it is. No one does.”
“I see. Well, I began by reminding you that you are under arrest. I think it’s time we found you somewhere to sleep. You’ll be quite comfortable; no one will hurt you; but you’re not going to get away. And we shall talk more tomorrow.”
He rang a bell, and Brother Louis came in almost at once.
“Show Mrs. Coulter to the best guest room,” said the President. “And lock her in.”
The best guest room was shabby and the furniture was cheap, but at least it was clean. After the lock had turned behind her, Mrs. Coulter looked around at once for the microphone and found one in the elaborate light-fitting and another under the frame of the bed. She disconnected them both, and then had a horrible surprise.
Watching her from the top of the chest of drawers behind the door was Lord Roke.
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