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• JOHN KEATS •
Lord Asriel said, “Marisa, wake up. We’re about to land.”
A blustery dawn was breaking over the basalt fortress as the intention craft flew in from the south. Mrs. Coulter, sore and heartsick, opened her eyes; she had not been asleep. She could see the angel Xaphania gliding above the landing ground, and then rising and wheeling up to the tower as the craft made for the ramparts.
As soon as the craft had landed, Lord Asriel leapt out and ran to join King Ogunwe on the western watchtower, ignoring Mrs. Coulter entirely. The technicians who came at once to attend to the flying machine took no notice of her, either; no one questioned her about the loss of the aircraft she’d stolen; it was as if she’d become invisible. She made her way sadly up to the room in the adamant tower, where the orderly offered to bring her some food and coffee.
“Whatever you have,” she said. “And thank you. Oh, by the way,” she went on as the man turned to go: “Lord Asriel’s alethiometrist, Mr. . . .”
“Mr. Basilides?”
“Yes. Is he free to come here for a moment?”
“He’s working with his books at the moment, ma’am. I’ll ask him to step up here when he can.”
She washed and changed into the one clean shirt she had left. The cold wind that shook the windows and the gray morning light made her shiver. She put some more coals on the iron stove, hoping it would stop her trembling, but the cold was in her bones, not just her flesh.
Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. The pale, dark-eyed alethiometrist, with his nightingale dæmon on his shoulder, came in and bowed slightly. A moment later the orderly arrived with a tray of bread, cheese, and coffee, and Mrs. Coulter said:
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Basilides. May I offer you some refreshment?”
“I will take some coffee, thank you.”
“Please tell me,” she said as soon as she’d poured the drink, “because I’m sure you’ve been following what’s happened: is my daughter alive?”
He hesitated. The golden monkey clutched her arm.
“She is alive,” said Basilides carefully, “but also . . .”
“Yes? Oh, please, what do you mean?”
“She is in the world of the dead. For some time I could not interpret what the instrument was telling me: it seemed impossible. But there is no doubt. She and the boy have gone into the world of the dead, and they have opened a way for the ghosts to come out. As soon as the dead reach the open, they dissolve as their dæmons did, and it seems that this is the most sweet and desirable end for them. And the alethiometer tells me that the girl did this because she overheard a prophecy that there would come an end to death, and she thought that this was a task for her to accomplish. As a result, there is now a way out of the world of the dead.”
Mrs. Coulter couldn’t speak. She had to turn away and go to the window to conceal the emotion on her face. Finally she said:
“And will she come out alive?—But no, I know you can’t predict. Is she—how is she—has she . . .”
“She is suffering, she is in pain, she is afraid. But she has the companionship of the boy, and of the two Gallivespian spies, and they are still all together.”
“And the bomb?”
“The bomb did not hurt her.”
Mrs. Coulter felt suddenly exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep for months, for years. Outside, the flag rope snapped and clattered in the wind, and the rooks cawed as they wheeled around the ramparts.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, turning back to the reader. “I’m very grateful. Please would you let me know if you discover anything more about her, or where she is, or what she’s doing?”
The man bowed and left. Mrs. Coulter went to lie down on the camp bed, but try as she would, she couldn’t keep her eyes closed.
“What do you make of that, King?” said Lord Asriel.
He was looking through the watchtower telescope at something in the western sky. It had the appearance of a mountain hanging in the sky a hand’s breadth above the horizon, and covered in cloud. It was a very long way off—so far, in fact, that it was no bigger than a thumbnail held out at arm’s length. But it had not been there for long, and it hung there absolutely still.
The telescope brought it closer, but there was no more detail: cloud still looks like cloud however much it’s magnified.
“The Clouded Mountain,” said Ogunwe. “Or—what do they call it? The Chariot?”
“With the Regent at the reins. He’s concealed himself well, this Metatron. They speak of him in the apocryphal scriptures: he was a man once, a man called Enoch, the son of Jared—six generations away from Adam. And now he rules the Kingdom. And he’s intending to do more than that, if that angel they found by the sulphur lake was correct—the one who entered the Clouded Mountain to spy. If he wins this battle, he intends to intervene directly in human life. Imagine that, Ogunwe—a permanent Inquisition, worse than anything the Consistorial Court of Discipline could dream up, staffed by spies and traitors in every world and directed personally by the intelligence that’s keeping that mountain aloft . . . The old Authority at least had the grace to withdraw; the dirty work of burning heretics and hanging witches was left to his priests. This new one will be far, far worse.”
“Well, he’s begun by invading the Republic,” said Ogunwe. “Look—is that smoke?”
A drift of gray was leaving the Clouded Mountain, a slowly spreading smudge against the blue sky. But it couldn’t have been smoke: it was drifting against the wind that tore at the clouds.
The king put his field glasses to his eyes and saw what it was.
“Angels,” he said.
Lord Asriel came away from the telescope and stood up, hand shading his eyes. In hundreds, and then thousands, and tens of thousands, until half that part of the sky was darkened, the minute figures flew and flew and kept on coming. Lord Asriel had seen the billion-strong flocks of blue starlings that wheeled at sunset around the palace of the Emperor K’ang-Po, but he had never seen so vast a multitude in all his life. The flying beings gathered themselves and then streamed away slowly, slowly, to the north and the south.
“Ah! And what’s that?” said Lord Asriel, pointing. “That’s not the wind.”
The cloud was swirling on the southern flank of the mountain, and long tattered banners of vapor streamed out in the powerful winds. But Lord Asriel was right: the movement was coming from within, not from the air outside. The cloud roiled and tumbled, and then it parted for a second.
There was more than a mountain there, but they only saw it for a moment; and then the cloud swirled back, as if drawn across by an unseen hand, to conceal it again.
King Ogunwe put down his field glasses.
“That’s not a mountain,” he said. “I saw gun emplacements . . .”
“So did I. A whole complexity of things. Can he see out through the cloud, I wonder? In some worlds, they have machines to do that. But as for his army, if those angels are all they’ve got—”
The king gave a brief exclamation, half of astonishment, half of despair. Lord Asriel turned and gripped his arm with fingers that all but bruised him to the bone.
“They haven’t got this!” he said, and shook Ogunwe’s arm violently. “They haven’t got flesh!”
He laid his hand against his friend’s rough cheek.
“Few as we are,” he went on, “and short-lived as we are, and weak-sighted as we are—in comparison with them, we’re still stronger. They envy us, Ogunwe! That’s what fuels their hatred, I’m sure of it. They long to have our precious bodies, so solid and powerful, so well-adapted to the good earth! And if we drive at them with force and determination, we can sweep aside those infinite numbers as you can sweep your hand through mist. They have no more power than that!”
“Asriel, they have allies from a thousand worlds, living beings like us.”
“We shall win.”
“And suppose he’s sent those angels to look for your daughter?”
“My daughter!” cried Lord Asriel, exulting. “Isn’t it something to bring a child like that into the world? You’d think it was enough to go alone to the king of the armored bears and trick his kingdom out of his paws—but to go down into the world of the dead and calmly let them all out! And that boy; I want to meet that boy; I want to shake his hand. Did we know what we were taking on when we started this rebellion? No. But did they know—the Authority and his Regent, this Metatron—did they know what they were taking on when my daughter got involved?”
