The Rose Field, page 18
His voice was hoarse and weak. But it was Ionides, and he was alive. In a moment, heedless of every kind of pain, Lyra was kneeling beside him.
“Oh, my sorcerer, what have they done to you?”
“Mr. Malcolm, he get away?”
“A gryphon took him—as if it had been looking for him—but you, now, can you move? Can you walk?”
Asta was already close in silent conversation with the little gecko dæmon, whispering and nudging and licking her, gathering knowledge in the way dæmons could.
“You help me sit up, Miss Silver, maybe I can walk too.”
His throat was damaged as well as his mouth. It clearly hurt him to speak. Lyra stood up and took his left hand with her right. She was a little giddy herself, and she let him take his time to pull himself upright.
As his face became visible in the dim light, she saw how badly he’d been battered. One eye completely closed, blood coming from one of his ears, his nose smashed, broken teeth; a great surge of passionate anger rose in her breast.
“Whoever did this,” she said shakily, “I will see them dead.”
He swung his legs round and set his feet on the floor, but something else was troubling him.
“Your ribs?” she said.
He nodded, but even that hurt. How on earth would they get him out?
Then two things happened at the same time. The bell began to ring again, and a shadow fell over the bed.
Lyra looked round at once. She saw the figure of a woman in the doorway, and the woman said, “Who are you, and what are you doing?”
Ten
Always Leila
And she said it in English too.
Her silhouette against the light was slim and tense, just as ready to fight as to flee. Asta flowed down to the floor and came to stand close to Lyra, who stood up slowly, hands by her sides.
“What are you doing?” said the woman again.
“You can see what we’re doing,” Lyra said in the same quiet tone. “My name is Tatiana Iorekova, Queen of Novaya Zemlya. This man is my counselor, and he’s been badly beaten and tortured. I am releasing him and we are shortly going to leave. Now tell me who you are.”
“You are no queen. And this man’s name is Rashid Xenakis. He is a liar and a confidence trickster, and a thief and a smuggler, and more besides. My name is—”
“Leila?” said Ionides in the half-audible croak they’d made of his voice.
“Always Leila,” she said. “But what have they done to you, Rashid?”
“They’ve hurt him badly, and we’re going to take him away, and if you try to stop us I’ll kill you,” Lyra said. “You don’t think I can? Look at the door. Look at the lock. Then stand out of the way.”
Asta had moved a step closer to the woman and stood watching her, eyes wide, fur bristling, tail slowly swinging.
It was hard to read the woman’s expression, because what little light there was came from behind her, but her slender snake dæmon had extended her neck some way forward and now swayed a little this way and that, licking the air.
“Rashid will tell you whether you can believe me or not,” she said calmly, “and since you seem to trust him, you’d better listen to him. My name is Leila Pervani. I am not part of the Magisterium, nor am I against it. I am inclined to help my old friend Professor Xenakis, because I used to be fond of him. That’s why I came down here. But what are you doing? How did you get in? How do you think you’re going to leave?”
“It’s obvious what I’m doing. I need my counselor’s help, so I’m setting him free. If you stand back and don’t interfere, you won’t get hurt. Otherwise—”
“You wouldn’t have a chance. Listen to me and stop making idle threats. Upstairs they are in the oratory, and they’ll be there for another ten minutes or so. Then the nuncio will come down here and continue his interrogation. If you do as I say, you might be able to get out of the building. Argue with me and waste time, and you will both be dead by the morning. That dæmon is not yours,” she said, indicating Asta.
Lyra said, “If we ever come face to face again, at a time when we can talk, I’ll tell you about it. Now, how do we get out?”
“There is a young woman at the reception desk who will do whatever I tell her. You’ll have a minute or so to get through the foyer and out by the street door. Apart from the courtyard that is the only way, and the courtyard is guarded. You’d never get him through. But beware: the oratory is on the ground floor just beyond the reception desk.”
“Was that an Angelus bell we heard?” said Asta.
The woman said, “Yes. So you haven’t got long. Help him up and follow me.”
Lyra tried to lift Ionides from the bed, but she had no strength left.
“Give me the broom, Queen Tatiana,” he said.
Using it as a crutch, he managed to stand and limp after Leila Pervani. Lyra and Asta exchanged a glance as the woman and Ionides left the cell ahead of them, and Lyra saw in the dæmon’s eyes something like kinship, affection, fellow feeling. She felt her heart lift a little as they went out into the corridor together.
Leila Pervani was waiting at the foot of the staircase, under the light. She was wearing a light blue dress, simple enough, but she held herself with such elegance that Lyra couldn’t help noticing it, even though the situation was full of peril. The incessant tolling of that bell seemed to make every brick in the walls resonate and remind them of it.
Ionides leaned on the broom for a crutch, and Lyra felt a flare of rage as she saw the twisted way he had to move, a wound in his scalp still bleeding, an ear torn. She took the little stick out of her belt.
The woman said, “Wait at the top of the stairs while I speak to the girl at the desk. Keep the door shut. When you hear me knock, come out very quickly and follow. Very quickly.”
She ran to the top in silence like a cat, and slipped out before shutting the door without a sound.
“Can you climb the stairs?” Lyra whispered.
“Slowly, Miss Silver.”
Asta darted ahead and listened at the door while Lyra helped Ionides up the steps. It was hard going; he’d lost a sandal, and his bare foot was bloodied. But he climbed steadily and without making a sound. Lyra followed, little Pequeno in hand, Asta watching everything from above.
They reached the top, and a minute went by, and then another, and still they stood without speaking, listening hard. Ionides was breathing harshly; Lyra was trembling with pain and exhaustion, and the bell, still resounding, made her feel on the edge of madness.
Then the door handle turned.
“Come now,” said Leila Pervani, “at once.”
She stood aside, and as soon as Ionides was out in the corridor, she ran ahead and along to the corner. From there she looked around into the foyer, and then beckoned, and Lyra helped Ionides follow.
The woman lifted a finger before they turned the corner, and when she was sure the way was clear she said, “Go. Straight out and away.”
Ionides looked at her, and Lyra saw the look she gave him in return, and read all the complexity of affection and sorrow that passed between them. She felt a tension in his arm, but tugged gently and helped him forward. When they were halfway to the main door, the bell stopped.
Lyra stopped too, out of sheer surprise, but hurried forward again as she heard the sound of chairs being moved back on a hard floor, and a voice intoning a prayer, and other voices responding. Then an organ began to play, and then the sound of footsteps and voices talking. Lyra had her hand on the front door and pushed it open, just as the door of the oratory opened behind them.
Leila Pervani saw that and darted towards the first worshippers as they came out. She was calling urgently and pointing back towards the corner that led to the stairs.
“Quick,” said Asta, and Lyra urged Ionides out of the door and stumbled after him, letting the door close by itself.
“Better hurry away,” Lyra said. “They’ll be after us.”
“Leila will distract them,” he said hoarsely. “She will be showing them the door of the cell, and explaining that only diabolical magic could have done that to it, and that I will have changed myself into a lizard with iron teeth, far too dangerous to follow. They have never seen you, and she will not mention you. Queen Tatiana, I owe you—”
“Shh. Things to do,” she said. “Later.”
Across the road and into the alley to retrieve her rucksack, and then they were in the streets among the early-evening crowds, invisible.
* * *
—
Chen the camel-herder, now the master of the ruined research station at Tashbulak, had acquired a companion. Her name was Dilyara. She had worked as a cleaner at the station before it was attacked, and she missed the orderly way of life, the storerooms full of neatly stacked equipment, the process of making things neat and shining. She wasn’t a native of the region; she came from further west than most of her fellow workers, and she was used to being alone. A pang of silent nostalgia had brought her to the ruined buildings, and in Chen she found an ideal employer, for that was how she came to think of him. Employer, or thing to clean. She submitted impassively to his embraces, and little by little swept the corridors clear of sand and plaster and broken glass, gathered and tidied away brooms and dustpans and shovels and serviceable rags, watched as he made his oil-fired devils and idols to scare away intruders, cooked whatever edible things she could find, offered responses in her language to the grunts and snarls he uttered in his, and brought him warm water and soap and showed him their functions.
She spent more and more time in the laboratories. The raiding party had smashed things to pieces without any idea of what was valuable, or important, or even offensive to their religious views; it was all equally uninteresting to them, and they enjoyed acting like the clean wind of God, as one of their leaders had said to flatter and encourage them, and just sweeping through and moving on.
Dilyara thought that what went on in these austere and silent chambers had been important and fascinating almost beyond the power of words to tell. She whispered about it with her dæmon, a little fox with large ears and boundless curiosity. The laboratories were a holy place, whose secrets were unknown even to the worshippers who prayed there, where the floors not only needed sweeping but deserved it, where the benches desired to be clean and polished, where what could be repaired longed consciously for the touch of a repairing hand; and there was such a wealth of equipment that a good deal of it didn’t need repairing at all. The wind of God had parted around it and vanished.
Dilyara and her dæmon set to work, to clean, to worship, and to learn. They felt blessed. Chen took no notice, but he was cleaner.
* * *
—
The first thing they did was (hastily) to buy Ionides some new sandals and a new shirt and trousers. The second thing was to get to the bus station at Bab al-Faraj, which was not far from the nuncio’s residence, and buy tickets for the first bus leaving for a destination anywhere to the east. Baku on the Caspian Sea seemed far enough: a two-day journey, leaving in an hour. While Ionides retired to the washroom to repair what he could of his appearance, Lyra went to the ticket office, where she presented her laissez-passer from Mustafa Bey and found herself treated with the profoundest deference: exactly the effect the great merchant had promised.
The bus, she discovered, was one of the new fleet of vehicles Mustafa Bey had told her about, designed for long-distance travel, and fitted out with some luxury. Indeed, it was possible to take a private compartment, as on an international train, and Queen Tatiana felt it would be wrong to do anything less. It was expensive, of course, but Farder Coram’s gold would last her a while yet, and after paying for that and a comfortable seat nearby for her personal sorcerer, Lyra just had time to visit the bus station shop and buy the kind of toiletries that travelers need.
She and Ionides boarded together, saying little until the bus was on its way, with the lights of the city behind them and the darkness of the desert ahead. They sat at the little table in her private compartment sipping the tea an attendant had brought, and Lyra began to relax.
“Now,” she said to him, “I want to know all about Leila Pervani.”
Eleven
Mount Damāvand
Pan lay asleep beside Malcolm on the gryphon’s back, but not fast asleep; he was dreaming in a troubled way, and little convulsions shook his limbs from time to time, and quiet cries broke from his throat. Naturally Malcolm couldn’t touch him. Instead, he whispered: “Hush, Pan, don’t be troubled. She’s on her way, just as we are. Somewhere down there on the earth, she’ll be moving east like us. She’ll be safe. She’s strong and brave and clever and she wants you more than anything in the world. And Asta’s with her. Who could have thought that that would happen? When you wake up, we can talk about everything and decide what we’re going to do when we meet the gryphon queen.”
The little dæmon was quieter now. The immense wings of Prince Keshvād rose and fell, beating in the darkness, tireless and regular; and Malcolm would have slept, but for the ache in his hip and the constant unease of being several hundred feet in the air with nothing to hold on to. And it was savagely cold. He watched the stars, and every so often, with the greatest care, he shifted his position to ease the stiffness in all his joints, the gnawing pain in his hip, and felt a little relief; but there was nothing to make it any warmer.
Time passed; he did sleep a little, unwittingly; and he woke with a half-dreaming shock to find Pan curled up against his chest, as if the dæmon had instinctively sought the only warmth there was. So he drew his coat around them both and let his eyes fall shut again.
Then he heard Pan say, “Malcolm, when you saw the gryphons in that garden…had you seen them before?”
“Something like them…Pan, can you feel if anything’s happened to Lyra?”
“Just generally. Not specifically. We’re still one being, obviously, but…What was it you saw that was like the gryphons?”
“When Alice and I were traveling down the Thames with you and Lyra, when you were very young, I saw—well, Alice and I both saw—an old river god. A giant from under the water. He was there in the water close to us. In fact, he held Lyra in the palm of his hand and then he kissed his fingertip and pressed it to her forehead.”
“What did I do?”
“You just lay there with her and watched. And then later we saw a fairy. She wanted to steal Lyra away, but we tricked her. She fed Lyra, though; she suckled her. Anyway, the point is that the river god and the fairy were both strange like these gryphons. As if they came from the same order of beings.”
They said nothing for a few minutes, as the gryphons flew steadily onwards, and the stars wheeled slowly round the sky. Then Pan spoke again.
“Malcolm, what do you think the imagination is?”
“I think you probably know more than I do about that. Didn’t you set off to find Lyra’s imagination? You must have had some idea of what you were looking for.”
“I spoke…I wrote that when I was angry, and…I thought Lyra had changed. She’d read these books…they seemed to be scoffing at everything she used to be. Well, one of them was. Just empty, knowing laughter, as if nothing mattered at all. And the other one, The Hyperchorasmians…That was just full of cold hatred for things like the imagination.”
“She didn’t take it seriously, though, did she?”
“She did. It made her hard and contemptuous.”
“Surely not Lyra!”
“It wasn’t anything else. It was that book. I went—when I left Oxford—I went to find the author, and I did.”
“Did you? Gottfried Brande himself?”
“Yes. In Wittenberg. He was just like his book. He had a daughter living with him and she was very unhappy. I don’t think he knew how to like anyone, or anything either. It comes through in his book. When Lyra read it, it was as if something left her. Something interested and curious and…open-minded. Not intolerant. It was as if the philosopher, Brande, as if he was her father and she was trying to please him. But I was—I was…I was so cruel to Lyra. I reminded her of something she’d done—when we separated for the first time—and I accused her of betraying me; I know she didn’t really, but it felt…”
He was overcome. He couldn’t speak, and Malcolm thought he might have been sobbing, but the little dæmon made no sound and lay stiff and still inside the warmth of Malcolm’s coat.
“Not long before the old Master died, the Master of Jordan,” Malcolm said, “he told me something about Lyra that I don’t think he’d told anyone else. It was when I was teaching her privately, and I wasn’t doing it very well. I told the Master I thought I should stop, he should find a different tutor, and he told me things about when she was younger, when she went away to the Arctic…Remember, I’d taken her to Jordan College in the first place, with Alice, so the Master knew I’d been involved in her life, but I knew nothing about that voyage to the north. I didn’t know her really at all till I taught her for those few weeks. Anyway, the Master told me about the childhood she’d had at the college, and about how her mother had come to take her away, much against the wishes of the Master himself, and about how he’d given her the alethiometer…”
“I remember that. He told us to keep it secret from Mrs. Coulter. We used to pore over it for hours trying to understand it.”
“And he told me, the Master told me, that the alethiometer had predicted—remember, this was before she had it, when she was only, what was it, eleven or so—it had predicted that she would be involved in a great betrayal, and that she herself would be the betrayer, and that the experience would be terrible. But of course she must never know about the prediction. And the Master thought that something like that must have happened when she, when you both were away in the north, because you were changed when you came back—sadder, he said, you’d both suffered. He never asked her about it, and he only told me because he thought it might help me understand her and why she was finding things difficult.”
