Mrs. Coulter whispered to the shadow beside her:
"Look how he hides, Metatron! He creeps through the dark like a rat..."
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.
"I could strike him now," the shadow whispered.
"Yes, of course you could," she whispered back, leaning close; "but I want to see his face, dear Metatron; I want him to know I've betrayed him. Come, let's follow and catch him..."
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 desire, and she had to keep him by her side, under what control she could manage.
They moved down, silent, following Lord Asriel. The farther down they climbed, the more she felt a great weariness fall over her.
"What? What?" whispered the shadow, feeling her emotions, and suspicious at once.
"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 - "
"There was regret," the shadow said, "in your heart there was regret that you will not see her grow up."
"Oh, Metatron, how long it is since you were a man! Can you really not tell what it is I'm regretting? It's not her coming of age, but mine. How bitterly I regret that I didn't know of you in my own girlhood; how passionately I would have devoted myself to you..."
She leaned toward the shadow, as if she couldn't control the impulses of her own body, and the shadow hungrily sniffed and seemed to gulp at the scent of her flesh.
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:
"Keep behind me, Metatron - wait here - Asriel is suspicious - let me lull him first. When he's off guard, I'll call you. But come as a shadow, in this small form, so he doesn't see you - otherwise, he'll just let the child's daemon fly away."
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.
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.
He took her in his arms, and the golden monkey embraced the snow leopard's neck and buried his black face in her fur.
"Is Lyra safe? Has she found her daemon?" she whispered.
"The ghost of the boy's father is protecting both of them."
"Dust is beautiful... I never knew."
"What did you tell him?"
"I lied and lied, Asriel... Let's not wait too long, I can't bear it... We won't live, will we? We won't survive like the ghosts?"
"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, she'll have that time, and if we go with him, it doesn't matter."
"And Lyra will be safe?"
"Yes, yes," he said gently.
He kissed her. She felt as soft and light in his arms as she had when Lyra was conceived thirteen years before.
She was sobbing quietly. When she could speak, she whispered:
"I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done... I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none. But I love Lyra. Where did this love come from? I don't 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 I'd 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 he'd see..."
She had to stop to gather herself. He stroked her shining hair, all set about with golden Dust, and waited.
"Any moment now he'll lose patience," she whispered. "I told him to make himself small. But he's 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 we'll both go down with him..."
He kissed her, saying, "Yes. Lyra will be safe, and the Kingdom will be powerless against her. Call him now, Marisa, my love."
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.
"Metatron," she called softly. "It's time."
Metatron's 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 -
Who leapt at him at once, seizing him around the waist, and tried to hurl him to the ground. The angel's arms were free, though, and with fists, palms, elbows, knuckles, forearms, he battered Lord Asriel's 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.
However, his arms encircled the angel's wings, cramping them to his side. And a moment later, Mrs. Coulter had leapt up between those pinioned wings and seized Metatron's 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 man's arms locked so tightly around them.
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.
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 Asriel's arms were firm around him still, and in fact the man had a better grip now there wasn't 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.
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 Asriel's 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 angel's 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.
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 angel's hand. The rock came loose and clattered down 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.
Metatron was hampered, but he still wasn't hurt. Nor was he near the edge of the abyss.
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.
Then Mrs. Coulter found the angel's face under her hand, and she dug her fingers deep into his eyes.
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.
And Stelmaria the snow-leopard daemon, her own consciousness dimming with Lord Asriel's, made one last effort and leapt for the angel's throat.
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 angel's hair to wrench back his head and bare his throat for the snow leopard's teeth.
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 monkey's fingers were entwined in the angel's hair, and he would never let go -
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.
"Marisa! Marisa!"
The cry was torn from Lord Asriel, and with the snow leopard beside her, with a roaring in her ears, Lyra's 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 cliff-ghasts heard Lyra's exclamation of dismay, and their flat heads all snapped around at once.
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.
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.
"Tialys! Tialys!" he cried, and avoiding the snapping teeth, he hauled the biggest cliff-ghast's 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.
"Will," said Lyra behind him, "Will, look at this..."
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 -
"Oh, Will, he's still alive! But - the poor thing..."
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.
"He must be so old - I've never seen anyone suffering like that - oh, Will, can't we let him out?"
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.
"It's all right," Will said, "we can help you hide, at least. Come on, we won't hurt you."
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.
Between them they helped the ancient of days out of his crystal cell; it wasn't 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.
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.
But Lyra was saying something urgently.
"Will - we've got to move - we've got to, the Lady can hear those horses coming - "
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!"
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 the hawk's back sat a gray-haired lady, whose clear-eyed face looked first at Lyra, then at Salmakia clinging to her collar.
"Madame..." said Salmakia faintly, "we have done..."
"You have done all you need. Now we are here," said Madame Oxentiel, and twitched the reins.
At once the hawk screamed three times, so loud that Lyra's 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.
"Lyra," said the lady on the hawk, "and Will: follow us now, and we shall take you to your daemons."
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 Lady's 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.
"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 insect's back, finding a hand, an arm, a bare neck, and plunging his spur in before leaping back to the 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.
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.
"This way!" came the Lady's voice, and then she said, "Duck, now - get down low!"
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.
"Iorek!" she cried, joy leaping in her chest. "Oh, Iorek!"
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 bears to go left, go right, and crush the enemy between them.
Lightly, as if his armor weighed no more than his fur, the bear-king spun to face Will and Lyra, who were struggling upright.
"Iorek - behind you - they've got nets!" Will cried, because the riders were almost on them.
Before the bear could move, a rider's 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 couldn't fight free of the coils.
"Iorek!" Will shouted. "Keep still! Don't move!"
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.
But Will kept his head: instead of slashing wildly and getting in more of 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.
"Now go!" Will yelled, leaping clear, and Iorek seemed to explode upward full into the chest of the nearest horse.
The rider had raised his scimitar to sweep down at the bear's 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:
"On my back! Now!"
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.
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!"
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.
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 didn't reach them soon, they would die. More Specters were arriving there every minute, streaming over the ridge from the right. Will and Lyra could see them very clearly now.
An explosion just over 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.
"Hold on," Iorek growled, and began to charge.
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 didn't falter, but they found it hard to hold on. They couldn't dig their fingers into his fur - they had to grip the armor between their knees, and his back was so broad that both of them kept slipping.
"Look!" cried Lyra, pointing up as another shell burst nearby.
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.
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.
"They're afraid of the knife," said a voice beside them, and the bear-king stopped so suddenly that Will and Lyra tumbled off his back.
"Lee!" said Iorek. "Lee, my comrade, I have never seen this before. You are dead - what am I speaking to?"
"Iorek, old feller, you don't know the half of it. We'll take over now - the Specters aren't afraid of bears. Lyra, Will - come this way, and hold up that knife - "
The blue hawk swooped once more to Lyra's fist, and the gray-haired lady said, "Don't waste a second - go in and find your daemons and escape! There's more danger coming."
"Thank you, Lady! Thank you all!" said Lyra, and the hawk took wing.
Will could see Lee Scoresby's ghost dimly beside them, urging them into the grove, but they had to say farewell to Iorek Byrnison.
"Iorek, my dear, there en't words - bless you, bless you!"
"Thank you, King Iorek," said Will.
"No time. Go. Go!"
He pushed them away with his armored head. Will plunged after Lee Scoresby's 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.
"Keep close," he called to Lyra, and then cried out as a bramble sliced across his cheek.
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:
"This way!"
"Over here!"
"Keep going - we're holding them off!"
"Not far now!"
And then came a cry in a voice that Lyra knew and loved better than any other:
"Oh, come quick! Quick, Lyra!"
"Pan, darling - I'm here - "
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.
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 Parry's ghost marshaled his companions to fight them off.
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.
"There!" cried Lee. "See 'em? By that big rock - "
A wildcat, two wildcats, spitting and hissing and slashing. Both were daemons, and Will felt that if there were time he'd easily be able to tell which was Pantalaimon; but there wasn't time, because a Specter eased horribly out of the nearest patch of shadow and glided toward the daemons.
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.
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.
"Can you cut through?" said John Parry's ghost.
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. Lee's ghost, seeing why, leapt for the daemons and wrestled with the pale thing that was coming through the rock from behind them.
"Will - please - " said Lyra, gasping.
In went the knife, along, down, back. Lee Scoresby's ghost looked through and saw a wide, quiet prairie under a brilliant moon, so very like his own homeland that he thought he'd been blessed.
Will leapt across the clearing and seized the nearest daemon while Lyra scooped up the other.
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 Will's daemon, the nameless wildcat, and Will was carrying Pantalaimon.
They tore their glance away from each other's eyes.
"Good-bye, Mr. Scoresby!" Lyra cried, looking around for him. "I wish - oh, thank you, thank you - good-bye!"
"Good-bye, my dear child - good-bye, Will - go well!"
Lyra scrambled through, but Will stood still and looked into the eyes of his father's ghost, brilliant in the shadows. Before he left him, there was something he had to say.
Will said to his father's ghost, "You said I was a warrior. You told me that was my nature, and I shouldn't argue with it. Father, you were wrong. I fought because I had to. I can't choose my nature, but I can choose what I do. And I will choose, because now I'm free."
His father's smile was full of pride and tenderness. "Well done, my boy. Well done indeed," he said.
Will couldn't see him anymore. He turned and climbed through after Lyra.
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.
Out of the little grove, away from the baffled Specters, out of the valley, past the mighty form of his old 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.
