"This way!" came the Ladys voice, and then she said, "Duck, now, get down low!"
She hurled herself into the dark, sobbing and shaking, and Will tore down branches and ivy and slashed at brambles and nettles, while all around them the ghost-voices rose in a clamor of encouragement and warning.
"Pan, darling, Im here...”
Will saw her hands pressing against the crystal, trying to reach in to the angel and comfort him; because he was so old, and he was terrified, crying like a baby and cowering away into the lowest corner.
"No time. Go. Go!"
They were moving laboriously over the tumbled and broken rocks toward the foot of the slope. The farther down they went, the more the Dust light gave everything a nimbus of golden mist. Mrs. Coulter kept reaching for where his hand might have been if the shadow had been a human companion, and then seemed to recollect herself, and whispered:
On the hawks back sat a gray-haired lady, whose clear-eyed face looked first at Lyra, then at Salmakia clinging to her collar.
"Will," said Lyra behind him, "Will, look at this..."
A dozen witches were making for the flares, carrying thick-leaved, bushy branches, and with them they brushed the glaring lights aside, sweeping them away into the sky beyond. Darkness fell over the grove again, hiding it from the guns.
"Its all right," Will said, "we can help you hide, at least. Come on, we wont hurt you."
The cry was torn from Lord Asriel, and with the snow leopard beside her, with a roaring in her ears, Lyras mother stood and found her footing and leapt with all her heart, to hurl herself against the angel and her daemon and her dying lover, and seize those beating wings, and bear them all down together into the abyss.
The daemons had seized hold of him, too. Stelmaria had her teeth firmly in his leg, and the golden monkey was tearing at one of the edges of the nearest wing, snapping feathers, ripping at the vanes, and this only roused the angel to greater fury. With a sudden massive effort he flung himself sideways, freeing one wing and crushing Mrs. Coulter against a rock.
Behind them, the rest of the bears were engaging with the strange cavalry, helped by the Gallivespians, whose stings enraged the horses. The lady on the blue hawk skimmed low and called: "Straight ahead now! Among the trees in the valley!"
"Will, weve got to move, weve got to, the Lady can hear those horses coming...”
"Is Lyra safe? Has she found her daemon?" she whispered.
Out of the little grove, away from the baffled Specters, out of the valley, past the mighty form of his old
Who leapt at him at once, seizing him around the waist, and tried to hurl him to the ground. The angels arms were free, though, and with fists, palms, elbows, knuckles, forearms, he battered Lord Asriels head and body: great pummeling blows that forced the breath from his lungs and rebounded from his ribs, that cracked against his skull and shook his senses.
He heard the others cry and shriek in hatred as they fled, and he knew that Lyra was unhurt beside him; but he threw himself down in the mud with only one thing in his mind.
Then he was gone: a mystery dissolving in mystery. It had all taken less than a minute, and Will turned back at once to the fallen Chevalier. He picked up the little body, cradling it in his palms, and found his tears flowing fast.
"Tialys! Tialys!" he cried, and avoiding the snapping teeth, he hauled the biggest cliff-ghasts head aside. Tialys was dead, his spurs deep in her neck. The creature was kicking and biting still, so he cut off her head and rolled it away before lifting the dead Gallivespian clear of the leathery neck.
"Keep going, were holding them off!"
Metatron was hampered, but he still wasnt hurt. Nor was he near the edge of the abyss.
"Now go!" Will yelled, leaping clear, and Iorek seemed to explode upward full into the chest of the nearest horse.
"Oh, come quick! Quick, Lyra!"
Lyra leapt up, and Will followed. Pressing the cold iron between their legs, they felt the massive surge of power as Iorek began to move.
Will and Lyra were both trembling and weak with fear, exhaustion, nausea, and pain, but giving up was inconceivable. Lyra tore at the brambles with her bare hands, Will slashed and hacked to left and right, as around them the combat of the shadowy beings became more and more savage.
Metatron cried out. From far off across the great cavern, echoes answered, and his voice bounded from cliff to cliff, doubling and diminishing and causing those distant ghosts to pause in their endless procession and look up.
They moved down, silent, following Lord Asriel. The farther down they climbed, the more she felt a great weariness fall over her.
But the Specters had found their target, too, and they pressed in through the snagging tangle of bush and briar and root and branch, meeting no more resistance than smoke. A dozen, a score of the pallid malignities seemed to pour in toward the center of the grove, where John Parrys ghost marshaled his companions to fight them off.
Lord Asriel was waiting behind a great block of granite, out of sight of the Regent. The snow leopard heard them coming, and Lord Asriel stood up as Mrs. Coulter came around the corner. Everything, every surface, every cubic centimeter of air, was permeated by the falling Dust, which gave a soft clarity to every tiny detail; and in the Dust light Lord Asriel saw that her face was wet with tears, and that she was gritting her teeth so as not to sob.
They stood on a ledge high up in the great cavern, watching Lord Asriel and the snow leopard make their careful way down, a long way below.
"Metatron," she called softly. "Its time."
"Over here!"
"Iorek!" Will shouted. "Keep still! Dont move!"
Before the bear could move, a riders net hissed through the air, and instantly Iorek was enveloped in steel-strong cobweb. He roared, rearing high, slashing with huge paws at the rider. But the net was strong, and although the horse whinnied and reared back in fear, Iorek couldnt fight free of the coils.
"Yes, yes," he said gently.
And as Metatron raised the bloody stone high, a golden-furred shape sprang up like a flame leaping to a treetop, and the monkey sank his teeth into the angels hand. The rock came loose and clattered down
All around them there was movement, noise, and struggle. The shadows moved to and fro like branches in a high wind. They might have been ghosts: both children felt the little dashes of cold they knew so well. Then they heard voices all around:
toward the edge, and Metatron swept his arm to left and right, trying to dislodge the daemon; but the golden monkey clung with teeth, claws, and tail, and then Mrs. Coulter gathered the great white beating wing to herself and smothered its movement.
But those blows were beginning to tell. And as Lord Asriel tried to keep his footing on the broken rocks, something shattering happened to the back of his head. When he flung himself sideways, Metatron had seized a fist-sized rock, and now he brought it down with brutal force on the point of Lord Asriels skull. The man felt the bones of his head move against each other, and he knew that another blow like that would kill him outright. Dizzy with pain, pain that was worse for the pressure of his head against the angels side, he still clung fast, the fingers of his right hand crushing the bones of his left, and stumbled for a footing among the fractured rocks.
"Madame..." said Salmakia faintly, "we have done..."
And Stelmaria the snow-leopard daemon, her own consciousness dimming with Lord Asriels, made one last effort and leapt for the angels throat.
And then came a cry in a voice that Lyra knew and loved better than any other:
However, his arms encircled the angels wings, cramping them to his side. And a moment later, Mrs. Coulter had leapt up between those pinioned wings and seized Metatrons hair. His strength was enormous: it was like holding the mane of a bolting horse. As he shook his head furiously, she was flung this way and that, and she felt the power in the great folded wings as they strained and heaved at the mans arms locked so tightly around them.
And now Lord Asriel was dragging him, dragging him backward, feet stumbling and rocks falling, and the golden monkey was leaping down with them, snapping and scratching and tearing, and they were almost there, almost at the edge; but Metatron forced himself up, and with a last effort spread both wings wide, a great white canopy that beat down and down and down, again and again and again, and then Mrs. Coulter had fallen away, and Metatron was upright, and the wings beat harder and harder, and he was aloft, he was leaving the ground, with Lord Asriel still clinging tight, but weakening fast. The golden monkeys fingers were entwined in the angels hair, and he would never let go…
"Theyre afraid of the knife," said a voice beside them, and the bear-king stopped so suddenly that Will and Lyra tumbled off his back.
Almost there; and the daemons were mad with fear, because more Specters and still more came pressing through the trees, and only the valiant ghosts were holding them back.
full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure hed see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything Id ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didnt. There is none. But I love Lyra. Where did this love come from? I dont know; it came to me like a thief in the night, and now I love her so much my heart is bursting with it. All I could hope was that my crimes were so monstrous that the love was no bigger than a mustard seed in the shadow of them, and I wished Id committed even greater ones to hide it more deeply still... But the mustard seed had taken root and was growing, and the little green shoot was splitting my heart wide open, and I was so afraid hed see..."
"Good-bye, my dear child, good-bye, Will, go well!"
And now the grove was only a few yards away. Will and Lyra both felt their missing selves close by, an excitement, a wild hope chilled with fear, because the Specters were thick among the trees and they would have to go in directly among them, and the very sight of them evoked that nauseating weakness at the heart.
Mrs. Coulter was stunned for a second, and her hands came loose. At once the angel reared up again, beating his one free wing to fling off the golden monkey; but Lord Asriels arms were firm around him still, and in fact the man had a better grip now there wasnt so much to enclose. Lord Asriel set himself to crushing the breath out of Metatron, grinding his ribs together, and trying to ignore the savage blows that were landing on his skull and his neck.
"Good-bye, Mr. Scoresby!" Lyra cried, looking around for him. "I wish, oh, thank you, thank you, good-bye!"
"You have done all you need. Now we are here," said Madame Oxentiel, and twitched the reins.
Will pulled her down again at once, for not only Iorek Byrnison but a regiment of his bears were making directly for them. Just in time Lyra tucked her head down, and then Iorek bounded over them, roaring orders to his hears to go left, go right, and crush the enemy between them.
"There was regret," the shadow said, "in your heart there was regret that you will not see her grow up."
"Iorek!" she cried, joy leaping in her chest. "Oh, Iorek!"
The blue hawk swooped once more to Lyras fist, and the gray-haired lady said, "Dont waste a second, go in and find your daemons and escape! Theres more danger coming."
"This way!"
Lightly, as if his armor weighed no more than his fur, the bear-king spun to face Will and Lyra, who were struggling upright.
Then Mrs. Coulter found the angels face under her hand, and she dug her fingers deep into his eyes.
Metatrons shadow-cloaked form appeared out of the golden air and took in at once what was happening: the two daemons, crouching and watchful, the woman with the nimbus of Dust, and Lord Asriel...
Will leapt across the clearing and seized the nearest daemon while Lyra scooped up the other.
His fathers smile was full of pride and tenderness. "Well done, my boy. Well done indeed," he said.
"And Lyra will be safe?"
"I lied and lied, Asriel.. .Lets not wait too long, I cant bear it... We wont live, will we? We wont survive like the ghosts?"
In went the knife, along, down, back. Lee Scoresbys ghost looked through and saw a wide, quiet prairie under a brilliant moon, so very like his own homeland that he thought hed been blessed.
"Iorek, old feller, you dont know the half of it. Well take over now, the Specters arent afraid of bears. Lyra, Will, come this way, and hold up that knife...”
"Oh, Will, hes still alive! But, the poor thing..."
desire, and she had to keep him by her side, under what control she could manage.
Lyra scrambled through, but Will stood still and looked into the eyes of his fathers ghost, brilliant in the shadows. Before he left him, there was something he had to say.
"He must be so old, Ive never seen anyone suffering like that, oh, Will, cant we let him out?"
The rider had raised his scimitar to sweep down at the bears neck, but Iorek Byrnison in his armor weighed nearly two tons, and nothing at that range could withstand him. Horse and rider, both of them smashed and shattered, fell harmlessly aside. Iorek gathered his balance, looked around to see how the land lay, and roared to the children:
But Will kept his head: instead of slashing wildly and getting in moreof a tangle, he watched the flow of the net and cut it through in a matter of moments. The second net fell useless to the ground, and then Will leapt at Iorek, feeling with his left hand, cutting with his right. The great bear stood motionless as the boy darted here and there over his vast body, cutting, freeing, clearing the way.
"Can you cut through?" said John Parrys ghost.
But then came hoofbeats in a sudden thunder from behind, and the children turned in dismay: those horse-people were bearing down on them at a gallop, and already one or two had nets in their hands, whirling them around over their heads and entrapping the dragonflies, to snap the nets like whips and fling the broken insects aside.
He scrambled forward through the puddles and over the tussocks as the rider tried to control the horse, and reached Iorek just at the moment when a second rider arrived and another net hissed through the air.
She had to stop to gather herself. He stroked her shining hair, all set about with golden Dust, and waited.
A wildcat, two wildcats, spitting and hissing and slashing. Both were daemons, and Will felt that if there were time hed easily be able to tell which was Pantalaimon; but there wasnt time, because a Specter eased horribly out of the nearest patch of shadow and glided toward the daemons.
"What? What?" whispered the shadow, feeling her emotions, and suspicious at once.
insect as it wheeled and skimmed past again. They were so quick it was almost impossible to follow. The soldiers turned and fled in panic, their discipline shattered.
"Look!" cried Lyra, pointing up as another shell burst nearby.
Shewas sobbing quietly. When she could speak, she whispered:
"Not far now!"
"Marisa! Marisa!"
She took a deep breath and let it out in a long, shuddering sigh. Then she smoothed her skirt down over her thighs and tucked the hair back behind her ears.
Will sprang forward and slashed the knife at the nearest of them. He felt a little kick on his shoulder as Tialys leapt off and landed on the cheek of the biggest, seizing her hair and kicking hard below the jaw before she could throw him off. The creature howled and thrashed as she fell into the mud, and the nearest one looked stupidly at the stump of his arm, and then in horror at his own ankle, which his sliced-off hand had seized as it fell. A second later the knife was in his breast. Will felt the handle jump three or four times with the dying heartbeats, and pulled it out before the cliff-ghast could twist it away in falling.
"I was thinking," she said with a sweet malice, "how glad I am that the child will never grow up to love and be loved. I thought I loved her when she was a baby; but now...”
"Oh, Metatron, how long it is since you were a man! Can you really not tell what it is Im regretting? Its not her coming of age, but mine. How bitterly I regret that I didnt know of you in my own girlhood; how passionately I would have devoted myself to you..."
"Iorek, behind you, theyve got nets!" Will cried, because the riders were almost on them.
He kissed her, saying, "Yes. Lyra will be safe, and the Kingdom will be powerless against her. Call him now, Marisa, my love."
And even in that horrible urgency, even at that moment of utmost peril, each of them felt the same little shock of excitement: for Lyra was holding Wills daemon, the nameless wildcat, and Will was carrying Pantalaimon.
And fighting for control of the grove itself were a score or more Specters, being held back by a ragged band of ghosts. As soon as they saw that little group of trees, Lyra and Will both knew that their daemons were in there, and that if they didnt reach them soon, they would die. More Specters were arriving there
The shaking hand seized his and feebly held on. The old one was uttering a wordless groaning whimper that went on and on, and grinding his teeth, and compulsively plucking at himself with his free hand; but as Lyra reached in, too, to help him out, he tried to smile, and to bow, and his ancient eyes deep in their wrinkles blinked at her with innocent wonder.
"Thank you, Lady! Thank you all!" said Lyra, and the hawk took wing.
They did, and felt the earth shake under them. Could that be hoofbeats? Lyra raised her head and wiped the wet hair from her eyes, and saw something quite different from horses.
But Lyra was saying something urgently.
She leaned toward the shadow, as if she couldnt control the impulses of her own body, and the shadow hungrily sniffed and seemed to gulp at the scent of her flesh.
every minute, streaming over the ridge from the right. Will and Lyra could see them very clearly now.
Out of the indigo sky an indigo hawk swooped low, and Lyra cried out and ducked; but Salmakia cried with all her strength, "No, Lyra! No! Stand high, and hold out your fist!"
They tore their glance away from each others eyes.
A flare burst high above, and another and another, drifting slowly downward with a magnesium-bright glare. Another shell burst, closer this time, and they felt the shock of the air and a second or two later the sting of earth and stones on their faces. Iorek didnt falter, but they found it hard to hold on. They couldnt dig their fingers into his fur, they had to grip the armor between their knees, and his hack was so broad that both of them kept slipping.
He kissed her. She felt as soft and light in his arms as she had when Lyra was conceived thirteen years before.
Mrs. Coulter whispered to the shadow beside her:
Will held up the knife, and had to stop as a racking bout of nausea shook him from head to toe. There was nothing left in his stomach, and the spasm hurt dreadfully. Lyra beside him was in the same state. Lees ghost, seeing why, leapt for the daemons and wrestled with the pale thing that was coming through the rock from behind them.
An explosion justover the ridge shook the ground and flung stones and clods of earth high into the air. Lyra cried out, and Will had to clutch his chest.
"There!" cried Lee. "See em? By that big rock...”
"Thank you, King Iorek," said Will.
companion the armor-clad bear, the last little scrap of the consciousness that had been the aeronaut Lee Scoresby floated upward, just as his great balloon had done so many times. Untroubled by the flares and the bursting shells, deaf to the explosions and the shouts and cries of anger and warning and pain, conscious only of his movement upward, the last of Lee Scoresby passed through the heavy clouds and came out under the brilliant stars, where the atoms of his beloved daemon, Hester, were waiting for him.
"Yes, of course you could," she whispered back, leaning close; "but I want to see his face, dear Metatron; I want him to know Ive betrayed him. Come, lets follow and catch him..."
Will leapt over the last obstacle, a fallen tree trunk, and plunged the knife into the unresisting shimmer in the air. He felt his arm go numb, but he clenched his teeth as he was clenching his fingers around the hilt, and the pale form seemed to boil away and melt back into the darkness again.
"The ghost of the boys father is protecting both of them."
"Look how he hides, Metatron! He creeps through the dark like a rat..."
The Regent was a being whose profound intellect had had thousands of years to deepen and strengthen itself, and whose knowledge extended over a million universes. Nevertheless, at that moment he was blinded by his twin obsessions: to destroy Lyra and to possess her mother. He nodded and stayed where he was, while the woman and the monkey moved forward as quietly as they could.
"Not if we fall into the abyss. We came here to give Lyra time to find her daemon, and then time to live and grow up. If we take Metatron to extinction, Marisa, shell have that time, and if we go with him, it doesnt matter."
"Lyra," said the lady on the hawk, "and Will: follow us now, and we shall take you to your daemons."
"Hold on," Iorek growled, and began to charge.
Will could see Lee Scoresbys ghost dimly beside them, urging them into the grove, but they had to say farewell to Iorek Byrnison.
"Left! Left!" cried the voice from the blue hawk, and in the lightning-riven murk they turned that way; and to their right Will saw a body of men in light gray armor, helmeted, masked, their gray wolf daemons padding in step beside them. A stream of dragonflies made for them at once, and the men faltered. Their guns were no use, and the Gallivespians were among them in a moment, each warrior springing from his insects back, finding a hand, an arm, a bare neck, and plung-: ing his spur in before leaping back to the
He took her in his arms, and the golden monkey embraced the snow leopards neck and buried his black face in her fur.
"Dust is beautiful... I never knew."
"Iorek, my dear, there ent words, bless you, bless you!"
And now that their purpose was achieved, now the children had found their daemons and escaped, the dead warriors allowed their atoms to relax and drift apart, at long, long last.
"Keep behind me, Metatron, wait here, Asriel is suspicious, let me lull him first. When hes off guard, Ill call you. But come as a shadow, in this small form, so he doesnt see you, otherwise, hell just let the childs daemon fly away."
"Will, please...” said Lyra, gasping.
"What did you tell him?"
But they were over the edge of the abyss. They were rising. And if they flew higher, Lord Asriel would fall, and Metatron would escape.
Metatron fell to his knees. Mrs. Coulter, falling with him, saw the blood-filled eyes of Lord Asriel gaze at her. And she scrambled up, hand over hand, forcing the beating wing aside, and seized the angels hair to wrench back his head and bare his throat for the snow leopards teeth.
So Lyra held still, supporting one arm with the other, and the blue hawk wheeled and turned and swooped again, to seize her knuckles in sharp claws.
"On my back! Now!"
"I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and
Iorek reached the top of a little rise in the ground and paused. Ahead of them the broken ground sloped down toward a grove about a quarter of a mile away. Somewhere beyond that a battery of great guns was firing shell after shell, howling high overhead, and someone was firing flares, too, that burst just under the clouds and drifted down toward the trees, making them blaze with cold green light as a fine target for the guns.
Will couldnt see him anymore. He turned and climbed through after Lyra.
And by now Lord Asriel was weakening. He was holding fast to his blood-soaked consciousness, but with every movement a little more was lost. He could feel the edges of the bones grinding together in his skull; he could hear them. His senses were disordered; all he knew was hold tight and drag down.
"Any moment now hell lose patience," she whispered. "I told him to make himself small. But hes only an angel, after all, even if he was once a man. And we can wrestle with him and bring him to the edge of the gulf, and well both go down with him..."
As the hawk spread its wings and lifted away from one hand, Lyra felt the little weight of Salmakia fall into the other, and knew in a moment that only the Ladys strength of mind had kept her alive this long. She cradled her body close, and ran with Will under the cloud of dragonflies, stumbling and falling more than once, but holding the Lady gently against her heart all the time.
The cliff-ghasts heard Lyras exclamation of dismay, and their flat heads all snapped around at once.
At once the hawk screamed three times, so loud that Lyras head rang. In response there darted from the sky first one, then two and three and more, then hundreds of brilliant warrior-bearing dragonflies, all skimming so fast it seemed they were bound to crash into one another; but the reflexes of the insects and the skills of their riders were so acute that instead, they seemed to weave a tapestry of swift and silent needle-bright color over and around the children.
"Keep close," he called to Lyra, and then cried out as a bramble sliced across his cheek.
"Lee!" said Iorek. "Lee, my comrade, I have never seen this before. You are dead, what am I speaking to?"
He pushed them away with his armored head. Will plunged after Lee Scoresbys ghost into the undergrowth, slashing to right and left with the knife. The light here was broken and muted, and the shadows were thick, tangled, confusing.
She was gazing into the crystal litter. It was unbroken, although the crystal was stained and smeared with mud and the blood from what the cliff-ghasts had been eating before they found it. It lay tilted crazily among the rocks, and inside it...
Will said to his fathers ghost, "You said I was a warrior. You told me that was my nature, and I shouldnt argue with it. Father, you were wrong. I fought because I had to. I cant choose my nature, but I can choose what I do. And I will choose, because now Im free."
The Dust fall shone like a great pillar of faint light as it descended smoothly and never-endingly into the gulf. Mrs. Coulter had no attention to spare for it, because the shadow beside her was trembling with
"I could strike him now," the shadow whispered.
Between them they helped the ancient of days out of his crystal cell; it wasnt hard, for he was as light as paper, and he would have followed them anywhere, having no will of his own, and responding to simple kindness like a flower to the sun. But in the open air there was nothing to stop the wind from damaging him, and to their dismay his form began to loosen and dissolve. Only a few moments later he had vanished completely, and their last impression was of those eyes, blinking in wonder, and a sigh of the most profound and exhausted relief.
Will cut through the crystal in one movement and reached in to help the angel out. Demented and powerless, the aged being could only weep and mumble in fear and pain and misery, and he shrank away from what seemed like yet another threat.
