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Finally Will said, “Balthamos, come here.”
The angel came at his command, helpless. Shivering inside his cloak, in the bitter cold gloom of the tundra, the boy said to him, “You must try to keep quiet now. You know there are things out there that’ll attack if they hear a noise. I can protect you with the knife if you’re nearby, but if they attack you up there, I won’t be able to help. And if you die, too, that’ll be the end for me. Balthamos, I need you to help guide me to Lyra. Please don’t forget that. Baruch was strong—be strong, too. Be like him for me.”
At first Balthamos didn’t speak, but then he said, “Yes. Yes, of course I must. Sleep now, Will, and I shall stand guard, I shan’t fail you.”
Will trusted him; he had to. And presently he fell asleep again.
When he woke up, soaked with dew and cold to his bones, the angel was standing nearby. The sun was just rising, and the reeds and the marsh plants were all tipped with gold.
Before Will could move, Balthamos said, “I’ve decided what I must do. I shall stay with you day and night, and do it cheerfully and willingly, for the sake of Baruch. I shall guide you to Lyra, if I can, and then I shall guide you both to Lord Asriel. I have lived thousands of years, and unless I am killed, I shall live many thousands of years more; but I never met a nature that made me so ardent to do good, or to be kind, as Baruch’s did. I failed so many times, but each time his goodness was there to redeem me. Now it’s not, I shall have to try without it. Perhaps I shall fail from time to time, but I shall try all the same.”
“Then Baruch would be proud of you,” said Will, shivering.
“Shall I fly ahead now and see where we are?”
“Yes,” said Will, “fly high, and tell me what the land’s like farther on. Walking on this marshland is going to take forever.”
Balthamos took to the air. He hadn’t told Will everything he was anxious about, because he was trying to do his best and not worry him; but he knew that the angel Metatron, the Regent, from whom they’d escaped so narrowly, would have Will’s face firmly imprinted on his mind. And not only his face, but everything about him that angels were able to see, including parts of which Will himself was not aware, such as that aspect of his nature Lyra would have called his dæmon. Will was in great danger from Metatron now, and at some time Balthamos would have to tell him; but not quite yet. It was too difficult.
Will, reckoning that it would be quicker to get warm by walking than by gathering fuel and waiting for a fire to catch, simply slung the rucksack over his shoulders, wrapped the cloak around everything, and set off toward the south. There was a path, muddy and rutted and potholed, so people did sometimes come this way; but the flat horizon was so far away on every side that he had little sense of making progress.
Sometime later, when the light was brighter, Balthamos’s voice spoke beside him.
“About half a day’s walk ahead, there is a wide river and a town, where there’s a wharf for boats to tie up. I flew high enough to see that the river goes a long way directly south and north. If you could get a passage, then you could move much more quickly.”
“Good,” said Will fervently. “And does this path go to the town?”
“It goes through a village, with a church and farms and orchards, and then on to the town.”
“I wonder what language they speak. I hope they don’t lock me up if I can’t speak theirs.”
“As your dæmon,” said Balthamos, “I shall translate for you. I have learned many human languages; I can certainly understand the one they speak in this country.”
Will walked on. The toil was dull and mechanical, but at least he was moving, and at least every step took him closer to Lyra.
The village was a shabby place: a huddle of wooden buildings, with paddocks containing reindeer, and dogs that barked as he approached. Smoke crept out of the tin chimneys and hung low over the shingled roofs. The ground was heavy and dragged at his feet, and there had obviously been a recent flood: walls were marked with mud to halfway up the doors, and broken beams of wood and loose-hanging sheets of corrugated iron showed where sheds and verandas and outbuildings had been swept away.
But that was not the most curious feature of the place. At first he thought he was losing his balance—it even made him stumble once or twice—for the buildings were two or three degrees out of the vertical, all leaning the same way. The dome of the little church had cracked badly. Had there been an earthquake?
Dogs were barking with hysterical fury, but not daring to come close. Balthamos, being a dæmon, had taken the form of a large snow white dog with black eyes, thick fur, and tight-curled tail, and he snarled so fiercely that the real dogs kept their distance. They were thin and mangy, and the few reindeer Will could see were scabby-coated and listless.
Will paused in the center of the little village and looked around, wondering where to go, and as he stood there, two or three men appeared ahead and stood staring at him. They were the first people he had ever seen in Lyra’s world. They wore heavy felt coats, muddy boots, and fur hats, and they didn’t look friendly.
The white dog changed into a sparrow and flew to Will’s shoulder. No one blinked an eye at this: each of the men had a dæmon, Will saw, dogs, most of them, and that was how things happened in this world. On his shoulder, Balthamos whispered: “Keep moving. Don’t look them in the eye. Keep your head down. That is the respectful thing to do.”
Will kept walking. He could make himself inconspicuous; it was his greatest talent. By the time he got to them, the men had already lost interest in him. But then a door opened in the biggest house in the road, and a voice called something loudly.
Balthamos said softly, “The priest. You will have to be polite to him. Turn and bow.”
Will did so. The priest was an immense, gray-bearded man, wearing a black cassock, with a crow dæmon on his shoulder. His restless eyes moved over Will’s face and body, taking everything in. He beckoned.
Will went to the doorway and bowed again.
The priest said something, and Balthamos murmured, “He’s asking where you come from. Say whatever you like.”
“I speak English,” Will said slowly and clearly. “I don’t know any other languages.”
“Ah, English!” cried the priest gleefully in English. “My dear young man! Welcome to our village, our little no-longer-perpendicular Kholodnoye! What is your name, and where are you going?”
“My name is Will, and I’m going south. I have lost my family, and I’m trying to find them again.”
“Then you must come inside and have some refreshment,” said the priest, and put a heavy arm around Will’s shoulders, pulling him in through the doorway.
The man’s crow dæmon was showing a vivid interest in Balthamos. But the angel was equal to that: he became a mouse and crept into Will’s shirt as if he were shy.
The priest led him into a parlor heavy with tobacco smoke, where a cast-iron samovar steamed quietly on a side table.
“What was your name?” said the priest. “Tell me again.”
“Will Parry. But I don’t know what to call you.”
“Otyets Semyon,” said the priest, stroking Will’s arm as he guided him to a chair. “Otyets means Father. I am a priest of the Holy Church. My given name is Semyon, and the name of my father was Boris, so I am Semyon Borisovitch. What is your father’s name?”
“John Parry.”
“John is Ivan. So you are Will Ivanovitch, and I am Father Semyon Borisovitch. Where have you come from, Will Ivanovitch, and where are you going?”
“I’m lost,” Will said. “I was traveling with my family to the south. My father is a soldier, but he was exploring in the Arctic, and then something happened and we got lost. So I’m traveling south because I know that’s where we were going next.”
The priest spread his hands and said, “A soldier? An explorer from England? No one so interesting as that has trodden the dirty roads of Kholodnoye for centuries, but in this time of upheaval, how can we know that he will not appear tomorrow? You yourself are a welcome visitor, Will Ivanovitch. You must stay the night in my house and we will talk and eat together. Lydia Alexandrovna!” he called.
