The Amber Spyglass (35 page)

Will and Lyra didn’t stop to look; they stumbled over the rough ground at a crouch, intent only on getting away unseen.

But they had to keep their heads low to see where they were treading and avoid twisting an ankle, or worse, and thunder exploded overhead as they ran, so they couldn’t hear the screeching and snarling of the cliff-ghasts until they were upon them.

The creatures were surrounding something that lay glittering in the mud: something slightly taller than they were, which lay on its side, a large cage, perhaps, with walls of crystal. They were hammering at it with fists and rocks, shrieking and yelling.

And before Will and Lyra could stop and run the other way, they had stumbled right into the middle of the troop.

THIRTY-ONE

AUTHORITY’S END

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 dæmon 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 dæmon?” 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 dæmon, 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 dæmons, 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 dæmons 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 dæmon; 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 dæmon, 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 dæmon 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.