But they were trained warriors, and a moment later their daemons leapt at the angel, savage teeth flashing white in the gloom – and Balthamos flinched: he cried out in fear and shame, and shrank back. Then he sprang upward, beating his wings hard. Will watched in dismay as the figure of his guide and friend soared up to vanish out of sight among the treetops.
Lyra was following it all with still‑dazed eyes. It had taken no more than two or three seconds, but it was enough for the Swiss to regroup, and now their leader was raising his crossbow, and Will had no choice: he swung up the pistol and clamped his right hand to the butt and pulled the trigger, and the blast shook his bones, but the bullet found the man’s heart.
The soldier fell back as if he’d been kicked by a horse. Simultaneously the two little spies launched themselves at the other two, leaping from the dragonflies at their victims before Will could blink. The woman found a neck, the man a wrist, and each made a quick backward stab with a heel. A choking, anguished gasp, and the two Swiss died, their daemons vanishing in mid‑howl.
Will leapt over the bodies, and Lyra went with him, running hard and fast with Pantalaimon racing wildcat‑formed at their heels. Where’s Ama? Will thought, and he saw her in the same moment dodging down a different path. Now she’ll be safe, he thought, and a second later he saw the pale gleam of the window deep behind the bushes. He seized Lyra’s arm and pulled her toward it. Their faces were scratched, their clothes were snagged, their ankles twisted on roots and rocks, but they found the window and tumbled through, into the other world, onto the bone‑white rocks under the glaring moon, where only the scraping of the insects broke the immense silence.
And the first thing Will did was to hold his stomach and retch, heaving and heaving with a mortal horror. That was two men now that he’d killed, not to mention the youth in the Tower of the Angels… Will did not want this. His body revolted at what his instinct had made him do, and the result was a dry, sour, agonizing spell of kneeling and vomiting until his stomach and his heart were empty.
Lyra watched helpless nearby, nursing Pan, rocking him against her breast.
Will finally recovered a little and looked around. And at once he saw that they weren’t alone in this world, because the little spies were there, too, with their packs laid on the ground nearby. Their dragonflies were skimming over the rocks, snapping up moths. The man was massaging the shoulder of the woman, and both of them looked at the children sternly. Their eyes were so bright and their features so distinct that there was no doubt about their feelings, and Will knew they were a formidable pair, whoever they were.
He said to Lyra, “The alethiometer’s in my rucksack, there.”
“Oh, Will – I did so hope you’d find it – whatever happened . Did you find your father? And my dream, Will – it’s too much to believe, what we got to do, oh, I daren’t even think of it… And it’s safe ! You brung it all this way safe for me…”
The words tumbled out of her so urgently that even she didn’t expect answers. She turned the alethiometer over and over, her fingers stroking the heavy gold and the smooth crystal and the knurled wheels they knew so well.
Will thought: It’ll tell us how to mend the knife!
But he said first, “Are you all right? Are you hungry or thirsty?”
“I dunno… yeah. But not too much. Anyway – ”
“We should move away from this window,” Will said, “just in case they find it and come through.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she said, and they moved up the slope, Will carrying his rucksack and Lyra happily carrying the little bag she kept the alethiometer in. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw the two small spies following, but they kept their distance and made no threat.
Over the brow of the rise there was a ledge of rock that offered a narrow shelter, and they sat beneath it, having carefully checked it for snakes, and shared some dried fruit and some water from Will’s bottle.
Will said quietly, “The knife’s broken. I don’t know how it happened. Mrs. Coulter did something, or said something, and I thought of my mother and that made the knife twist, or catch, or – I don’t know what happened. But we’re stuck till we can get it mended. I didn’t want those two little people to know, because while they think I can still use it, I’ve got the upper hand. I thought you could ask the alethiometer, maybe, and – ”
“Yeah!” she said at once. “Yeah, I will.”
She had the golden instrument out in a moment and moved into the moonlight so she could see the dial clearly. Looping back the hair behind her ears, just as Will had seen her mother do, she began to turn the wheels in the old familiar way, and Pantalaimon, mouse‑formed now, sat on her knee.
She had hardly started before she gave a little gasp of excitement, and she looked up at Will with shining eyes as the needle swung. But it hadn’t finished yet, and she looked back, frowning, until the instrument fell still.
She put it away, saying, “Iorek? Is he nearby, Will? I thought I heard you call him, but then I thought I was just wishing. Is he really ?”
“Yes. Could he mend the knife? Is that what the alethiometer said?”
“Oh, he can do anything with metal, Will! Not only armor – he can make little delicate things as well…” She told him about the small tin box Iorek had made for her to shut the spy‑fly in. “But where is he?”
“Close by. He would have come when I called, but obviously he was fighting… And Balthamos! Oh, he must have been so frightened…”
“Who?”
He explained briefly, feeling his cheeks warm with the shame that the angel must be feeling.
“But I’ll tell you more about him later,” he said. “It’s so strange… He told me so many things, and I think I understand them, too…” He ran his hands through his hair and rubbed his eyes.
“You got to tell me everything ,” she said firmly. “Everything you did since she caught me. Oh, Will, you en’t still bleeding? Your poor hand…”
“No. My father cured it. I just opened it up when I hit the golden monkey, but it’s better now. He gave me some ointment that he’d made – ”
“You found your father?”
“That’s right, on the mountain, that night…”
He let her clean his wound and put on some fresh ointment from the little horn box while he told her some of what had happened: the fight with the stranger, the revelation that came to them both a second before the witch’s arrow struck home, his meeting with the angels, his journey to the cave, and his meeting with Iorek.
“All that happening, and I was asleep,” she marveled. “D’you know, I think she was kind to me, Will – I think she was, I don’t think she ever wanted to hurt me… She did such bad things, but…”
She rubbed her eyes.
“Oh, but my dream , Will, I can’t tell you how strange it was! It was like when I read the alethiometer, all that clearness and understanding going so deep you can’t see the bottom, but clear all the way down.
“It was… Remember I told you about my friend Roger, and how the Gobblers caught him and I tried to rescue him, and it went wrong and Lord Asriel killed him?
“Well, I saw him. In my dream I saw him again, only he was dead, he was a ghost, and he was, like, beckoning to me, calling to me, only I couldn’t hear. He didn’t want me to be dead , it wasn’t that. He wanted to speak to me.
“And… It was me that took him there, to Svalbard, where he got killed, it was my fault he was dead. And I thought back to when we used to play in Jordan College, Roger and me, on the roof, all through the town, in the markets and by the river and down the Claybeds… Me and Roger and all the others… And I went to Bolvangar to fetch him safe home, only I made it worse, and if I don’t say sorry, it’ll all be no good, just a huge waste of time. I got to do that, you see, Will. I got to go down into the land of the dead and find him, and… and say sorry. I don’t care what happens after that. Then we can… I can… It doesn’t matter after that.”