“Think what we might do with the help of an aeronaut, Farder Coram!” said John Faa, rubbing his great hands together. “I’ve engaged him to sign up with us. Seems to me we struck lucky a coming here.”
“Luckier still if we had a clear idea of where we were going,” said Farder Coram, but nothing could damp John Faa’s pleasure in being on campaign once more.
After darkness had fallen, and when the stores and equipment had all been safely unloaded and stood in waiting on the quay, Farder Coram and Lyra walked along the waterfront and looked for Einarsson’s Bar. They found it easily enough: a crude concrete shed with a red neon sign flashing irregularly over the door and the sound of loud voices through the condensation-frosted windows.
A pitted alley beside it led to a sheet-metal gate into a rear yard, where a lean-to shed stood crazily over a floor of frozen mud. Dim yellow light through the rear window of the bar showed a vast pale form crouching upright and gnawing at a haunch of meat which it held in both hands. Lyra had an impression of bloodstained muzzle and face, small malevolent black eyes, and an immensity of dirty matted yellowish fur. As it gnawed, hideous growling, crunching, sucking noises came from it.
Farder Coram stood by the gate and called:
“Iorek Byrnison!”
The bear stopped eating. As far as they could tell, he was looking at them directly, but it was impossible to read any expression on his face.
“Iorek Byrnison,” said Farder Coram again. “May I speak to you?”
Lyra’s heart was thumping hard, because something in the bear’s presence made her feel close to coldness, danger, brutal power, but a power controlled by intelligence; and not a human intelligence, nothing like a human, because of course bears had no dæmons. This strange hulking presence gnawing its meat was like nothing she had ever imagined, and she felt a profound admiration and pity for the lonely creature.
He dropped the reindeer leg in the dirt and slumped on all fours to the gate. Then he reared up massively, ten feet or more high, as if to show how mighty he was, to remind them how useless the gate would be as a barrier, and he spoke to them from that height.
“Well? Who are you?”
His voice was so deep it seemed to shake the earth. The rank smell that came from his body was almost overpowering.
“I’m Farder Coram, from the gyptian people of Eastern Anglia. And this little girl is Lyra Belacqua.”
“What do you want?”
“We want to offer you employment, Iorek Byrnison.”
“I am employed.”
The bear dropped on all fours again. It was very hard to detect any expressive tones in his voice, whether of irony or anger, because it was so deep and so flat.
“What do you do at the sledge depot?” Farder Coram asked.
“I mend broken machinery and articles of iron. I lift heavy objects.”
“What kind of work is that for a panserbjørn?”
“Paid work.”
Behind the bear, the door of the bar opened a little way and a man put down a large earthenware jar before looking up to peer at them.
“Who’s that?” he said.
“Strangers,” said the bear.
The bartender looked as if he was going to ask something more, but the bear lurched toward him suddenly and the man shut the door in alarm. The bear hooked a claw through the handle of the jar and lifted it to his mouth. Lyra could smell the tang of the raw spirits that splashed out.
After swallowing several times, the bear put the jar down and turned back to gnaw his haunch of meat, heedless of Farder Coram and Lyra, it seemed; but then he spoke again.
“What work are you offering?”
“Fighting, in all probability,” said Farder Coram. “We’re moving north until we find a place where they’ve taken some children captive. When we find it, we’ll have to fight to get the children free; and then we’ll bring them back.”
“And what will you pay?”
“I don’t know what to offer you, Iorek Byrnison. If gold is desirable to you, we have gold.”
“No good.”
“What do they pay you at the sledge depot?”
“My keep here in meat and spirits.”
Silence from the bear; and then he dropped the ragged bone and lifted the jar to his muzzle again, drinking the powerful spirits like water.
“Forgive me for asking, Iorek Byrnison,” said Farder Coram, “but you could live a free proud life on the ice hunting seals and walruses, or you could go to war and win great prizes. What ties you to Trollesund and Einarsson’s Bar?”
Lyra felt her skin shiver all over. She would have thought a question like that, which was almost an insult, would enrage the great creature beyond reason, and she wondered at Farder Coram’s courage in asking it. Iorek Byrnison put down his jar and came close to the gate to peer at the old man’s face. Farder Coram didn’t flinch.
“I know the people you are seeking, the child cutters,” the bear said. “They left town the day before yesterday to go north with more children. No one will tell you about them; they pretend not to see, because the child cutters bring money and business. Now, I don’t like the child cutters, so I shall answer you politely. I stay here and drink spirits because the men here took my armor away, and without that, I can hunt seals but I can’t go to war; and I am an armored bear; war is the sea I swim in and the air I breathe. The men of this town gave me spirits and let me drink till I was asleep, and then they took my armor away from me. If I knew where they keep it, I would tear down the town to get it back. If you want my service, the price is this: get me back my armor. Do that, and I shall serve you in your campaign, either until I am dead or until you have a victory. The price is my armor. I want it back, and then I shall never need spirits again.”
ELEVEN
ARMOR
When they returned to the ship, Farder Coram and John Faa and the other leaders spent a long time in conference in the saloon, and Lyra went to her cabin to consult the alethiometer. Within five minutes she knew exactly where the bear’s armor was, and why it would be difficult to get it back.
She wondered whether to go to the saloon and tell John Faa and the others, but decided that they’d ask her if they wanted to know. Perhaps they knew already.
She lay on her bunk thinking of that savage mighty bear, and the careless way he drank his fiery spirit, and the loneliness of him in his dirty lean-to. How different it was to be human, with one’s dæmon always there to talk to! In the silence of the still ship, without the continual creak of metal and timber or the rumble of the engine or the rush of water along the side, Lyra gradually fell asleep, with Pantalaimon on her pillow sleeping too.
She was dreaming of her great imprisoned father when suddenly, for no reason at all, she woke up. She had no idea what time it was. There was a faint light in the cabin that she took for moonlight, and it showed her new cold-weather furs that lay stiffly in the corner of the cabin. No sooner did she see them than she longed to try them on again.
Once they were on, she had to go out on deck, and a minute later she opened the door at the top of the companionway and stepped out.
At once she saw that something strange was happening in the sky. She thought it was clouds, moving and trembling under a nervous agitation, but Pantalaimon whispered:
“The Aurora!”
Her wonder was so strong that she had to clutch the rail to keep from falling.
The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer. Lyra thought she could even hear them: a vast distant whispering swish. In the evanescent delicacy she felt something as profound as she’d felt close to the bear. She was moved by it; it was so beautiful it was almost holy; she felt tears p
rick her eyes, and the tears splintered the light even further into prismatic rainbows. It wasn’t long before she found herself entering the same kind of trance as when she consulted the alethiometer. Perhaps, she thought calmly, whatever moves the alethiometer’s needle is making the Aurora glow too. It might even be Dust itself. She thought that without noticing that she’d thought it, and she soon forgot it, and only remembered it much later.
And as she gazed, the image of a city seemed to form itself behind the veils and streams of translucent color: towers and domes, honey-colored temples and colonnades, broad boulevards and sunlit parkland. Looking at it gave her a sense of vertigo, as if she were looking not up but down, and across a gulf so wide that nothing could ever pass over it. It was a whole universe away.
But something was moving across it, and as she tried to focus her eyes on the movement, she felt faint and dizzy, because the little thing moving wasn’t part of the Aurora or of the other universe behind it. It was in the sky over the roofs of the town. When she could see it clearly, she had come fully awake and the sky city was gone.
The flying thing came closer and circled the ship on outspread wings. Then it glided down and landed with brisk sweeps of its powerful pinions, and came to a halt on the wooden deck a few yards from Lyra.
In the Aurora’s light she saw a great bird, a beautiful gray goose whose head was crowned with a flash of pure white. And yet it wasn’t a bird: it was a dæmon, though there was no one in sight but Lyra herself. The idea filled her with sickly fear.
The bird said:
“Where is Farder Coram?”
And suddenly Lyra realized who it must be. This was the dæmon of Serafina Pekkala, the clan queen, Farder Coram’s witch friend.
She stammered to reply:
“I—he’s—I’ll go and get him….”
She turned and scampered down the companionway to the cabin Farder Coram occupied, and opened the door to speak into the darkness:
“Farder Coram! The witch’s dæmon’s come! He’s waiting on the deck! He flew here all by hisself—I seen him coming in the sky—”
The old man said, “Ask him to wait on the afterdeck, child.”
The goose made his stately way to the stern of the ship, where he looked around, elegant and wild simultaneously, and a cause of fascinated terror to Lyra, who felt as though she were entertaining a ghost.
Then Farder Coram came up, wrapped in his cold-weather gear, closely followed by John Faa. Both old men bowed respectfully, and their dæmons also acknowledged the visitor.
“Greetings,” said Farder Coram. “And I’m happy and proud to see you again, Kaisa. Now, would you like to come inside, or would you prefer to stay out here in the open?”
“I would rather stay outside, thank you, Farder Coram. Are you warm enough for a while?”
Witches and their dæmons felt no cold, but they were aware that other humans did.
Farder Coram assured him that they were well wrapped up, and said, “How is Serafina Pekkala?”
“She sends her greetings to you, Farder Coram, and she is well and strong. Who are these two people?”
Farder Coram introduced them both. The goose dæmon looked hard at Lyra.
“I have heard of this child,” he said. “She is talked about among witches. So you have come to make war?”
“Not war, Kaisa. We are going to free the children taken from us. And I hope the witches will help.”
“Not all of them will. Some clans are working with the Dust hunters.”
“Is that what you call the Oblation Board?”
“I don’t know what this board may be. They are Dust hunters. They came to our regions ten years ago with philosophical instruments. They paid us to allow them to set up stations in our lands, and they treated us with courtesy.”
“What is this Dust?”
“It comes from the sky. Some say it has always been there, some say it is newly falling. What is certain is that when people become aware of it, a great fear comes over them, and they’ll stop at nothing to discover what it is. But it is not of any concern to witches.”
“And where are they now, these Dust hunters?”
“Four days northeast of here, at a place called Bolvangar. Our clan made no agreement with them, and because of our longstanding obligation to you, Farder Coram, I have come to show you how to find these Dust hunters.”
Farder Coram smiled, and John Faa clapped his great hands together in satisfaction.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” he said to the goose. “But tell us this: do you know anything more about these Dust hunters? What do they do at this Bolvangar?”
“They have put up buildings of metal and concrete, and some underground chambers. They burn coal spirit, which they bring in at great expense. We don’t know what they do, but there is an air of hatred and fear over the place and for miles around. Witches can see these things where other humans can’t. Animals keep away too. No birds fly there; lemmings and foxes have fled. Hence the name Bolvangar: the fields of evil. They don’t call it that. They call it ‘the station.’ But to everyone else it is Bolvangar.”
“And how are they defended?”
“They have a company of Northern Tartars armed with rifles. They are good soldiers, but they lack practice, because no one has ever attacked the settlement since it was built. Then there is a wire fence around the compound, which is filled with anbaric force. There may be other means of defense that we don’t know about, because as I say they have no interest for us.”
Lyra was bursting to ask a question, and the goose dæmon knew it and looked at her as if giving permission.
“Why do the witches talk about me?” she said.
“Because of your father, and his knowledge of the other worlds,” the dæmon replied.
That surprised all three of them. Lyra looked at Farder Coram, who looked back in mild wonder, and at John Faa, whose expression was troubled.
“Other worlds?” John Faa said. “Pardon me, sir, but what worlds would those be? Do you mean the stars?”
“Indeed no.”
“Perhaps the world of spirits?” said Farder Coram.
“Nor that.”
“Is it the city in the lights?” said Lyra. “It is, en’t it?”
The goose turned his stately head toward her. His eyes were black, surrounded by a thin line of pure sky-blue, and their gaze was intense.
“Yes,” he said. “Witches have known of the other worlds for thousands of years. You can see them sometimes in the Northern Lights. They aren’t part of this universe at all; even the furthest stars are part of this universe, but the lights show us a different universe entirely. Not further away, but interpenetrating with this one. Here, on this deck, millions of other universes exist, unaware of one another….”
He raised his wings and spread them wide before folding them again.
“There,” he said, “I have just brushed ten million other worlds, and they knew nothing of it. We are as close as a heartbeat, but we can never touch or see or hear these other worlds except in the Northern Lights.”
“And why there?” said Farder Coram.
“Because the charged particles in the Aurora have the property of making the matter of this world thin, so that we can see through it for a brief time. Witches have always known this, but we seldom speak of it.”
“My father believes in it,” Lyra said. “I know because I heard him talking and showing pictures of the Aurora.”
“Is this anything to do with Dust?” said John Faa.
“Who can say?” said the goose dæmon. “All I can tell you is that the Dust hunters are as frightened of it as if it were deadly poison. That is why they imprisoned Lord Asriel.”
“But why?” Lyra said.
“They think he intends to use Dust in some way in order to make a bridge between this world and the world beyond the Aurora.”
There was a lightness in Lyra’s head.
She heard Farder Coram say, “And does he?”
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“Yes,” said the goose dæmon. “They don’t believe he can, because they think he is mad to believe in the other worlds in the first place. But it is true: that is his intention. And he is so powerful a figure that they feared he would upset their own plans, so they made a pact with the armored bears to capture him and keep him imprisoned in the fortress of Svalbard, out of the way. Some say they helped the new bear king to gain his throne, as part of the bargain.”
Lyra said, “Do the witches want him to make this bridge? Are they on his side or against him?”
“That is a question with too complicated an answer. Firstly, the witches are not united. There are differences of opinion among us. Secondly, Lord Asriel’s bridge will have a bearing on a war being waged at the present between some witches and various other forces, some in the spirit world. Possession of the bridge, if it ever existed, would give a huge advantage to whoever held it. Thirdly, Serafina Pekkala’s clan—my clan—is not yet part of any alliance, though great pressure is being put on us to declare for one side or another. You see, these are questions of high politics, and not easily answered.”
“What about the bears?” said Lyra. “Whose side are they on?”
“On the side of anyone who pays them. They have no interest whatever in these questions; they have no dæmons; they are unconcerned about human problems. At least, that is how bears used to be, but we have heard that their new king is intent on changing their old ways….At any rate, the Dust hunters have paid them to imprison Lord Asriel, and they will hold him on Svalbard until the last drop of blood drains from the body of the last bear alive.”
“But not all bears!” Lyra said. “There’s one who en’t on Svalbard at all. He’s an outcast bear, and he’s going to come with us.”
The goose gave Lyra another of his piercing looks. This time she could feel his cold surprise.
Farder Coram shifted uncomfortably, and said, “The fact is, Lyra, I don’t think he is. We heard he’s serving out a term as an indentured laborer; he en’t free, as we thought he might be, he’s under sentence. Till he’s discharged he won’t be free to come, armor or no armor; and he won’t never have that back, either.”
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