Page 5 (1/2)

A lake of th of an iusts and belches and barring the way of the solitary winged figure who stood at its edge

If he took to the sky, the eneain at once; but if he stayed on the ground, it would take so long to get past this noxious pit that his ht arrive too late

He would have to take the greater risk He waited until a cloud of stinking smoke billowed off the yellow surface, and darted upward into the thick of it

Four pairs of eyes in different parts of the sky all saw the brief ainst the s the watchers forward to the cloud

Then began a hunt in which the pursuers couldn’t see the quarry and the quarry could see nothing at all The first to break out of the cloud on the far side of the lake would have the advantage, and that ht mean a successful kill

And unluckily for the single flier, he found the clear air a few seconds after one of his pursuers At once they closed with each other, trailing strea fumes The quarry had the best of it at first, but then another hunter flew free of the cloud In a swift and furious struggle, all three of the in the air like scraps of fla the rocks on the far side The other two hunters never ee of saw-toothed mountains, on a peak that commanded wide views of the plain below and the valleys behind, a fortress of basalt seerow out of the mountain as if soo

In vast caverns beneath the rearing walls, provisions of every sort were stored and labeled; in the arsenals andcalibrated, armed, and tested; in the es where phosphor and titaniu melted and combined in alloys never known or used before

On the most exposed side of the fortress, at a point deep in the shadow of a buttress where the hty walls rose sheer out of the ancient lava-flows, there was a sht and challenged all who sought to enter

While the watch was being changed on the ramparts above, the sentry staloved hands on his upper arht, and the little naphtha flare in the bracket beside hiave no heat His relief would co forward to theof chocolate, the smokeleaf, andat the little door was the last thing he expected However, he was alert, and he snapped open the spy hole, at the sa the tap that allowed a flow of naphtha past the pilot light in the buttress outside In the glare it threw, he saw three hooded figures carrying between them a fourth, whose shape was indistinct, and who seeure in front threw back his hood He had a face the sentry knew, but he gave the password anyway and said, "We found hiot an urgent e for Lord Asriel"

The sentry unbarred the door, and his terrier daeures h the narrow entrance Then the daeave a soft involuntary howl, quickly cut off, as the sentry saw that the figure being carried was an angel, wounded: an angel of low rank and little power, but an angel, nevertheless

"Lay hiuardroom," the sentry told them, and as they did so, he turned the crank of the telephone bell and reported as happening to the officer of the watch On the highest raht of steps up to a set of rooms whose s looked out north, south, east, and west The largest room was furnished with a table and chairs and a map chest, another with a camp bed A small bathroom completed the set

Lord Asriel sat in the ada his spy captain across aover the table, and a brazier held burning coals against the bitter chill of the night Inside the door, a s on a bracket

The spy captain was called Lord Roke He was striking to look at: he was no taller than Lord Asriel’s hand span, and as slender as a dragonfly, but the rest of Lord Asriel’s captains treated him with profound respect, for he was ar in the spurs on his heels

It was his custo but the greatest courtesy with a haughty and ue He and his kind, the Gallivespians, had few of the qualities of good spies except, of course, their exceptional smallness: they were so proud and touchy that they would never have remained inconspicuous if they had been of Lord Asriel’s size

"Yes," he said, his voice clear and sharp, his eyes glittering like droplets of ink, "your child, my Lord Asriel: I know about her Evidently I know more than you do"

Lord Asriel looked at him directly, and the little e of his colance flicked hier, so that he lost his balance and had to put out a hand to steady hilass A moment later Lord Asriel’s expression was bland and virtuous, just as his daughter’s could be, and from then on Lord Roke was more careful

"No doubt, Lord Roke," said Lord Asriel "But for reasons I don’t understand, the girl is the focus of the Church’s attention, and I need to knohy What are they saying about her?"

"The Magisteriu, another is investigating so to keep its discoveries secret from the rest The most active branches are the Consistorial Court of Discipline and the Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit, and," said Lord Roke, "I have spies in both of them"

"Have you turned a ratulate you They used to be inable"

"My spy in the Society is the Lady Salent There is a priest whose daeested that the ned to invoke the presence of Wisdom At the critical moment, the Lady Salmakia appeared in front of him The priest now thinks he can communicate with Wisdom whenever he pleases, and that she has the form of a Gallivespian and lives in his bookcase"

Lord Asriel smiled and said, "And what has she learned?" "The Society thinks that your daughter is the reat crisis will co will depend on how she behaves at that point As for the Consistorial Court of Discipline, it’s holding an inquiry at the ar and elsewhere My spy in the Court, the Chevalier Tialys, is in touch with me every day byme knohat they discover In short, I would say that the Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit will find out very soon where the child is, but they will do nothing about it It will take the Consistorial Court a little longer, but when they do, they will act decisively, and at once"

"Let me know the moers, and the s on the bracket beside the door spread her wings and glided to the table She had a bridle, a saddle, and stirrups Lord Roke sprang on her back in a second, and they flew out of the hich Lord Asriel held wide for them He left it open for a minute, in spite of the bitter air, and leaned on theseat, playing with the ears of his snow-leopard daenored her," he said "You remember the shock I needed a sacrifice, and the first child to arrive was hter But when I realized that there was another child with her, so she was safe, I relaxed Was that a fatal mistake? I didn’t consider her after that, not for a moment, but she is important, Stelmaria!"

"Let’s think clearly," his daemon replied "What can she do?"

"Do - not ?"

"She can read the alethioe"

"That’s nothing special So have others And where in Hell’s name can she be?"

There was a knock at the door behind him, and he turned at once

"My lord," said the officer who caate, wounded, he insists on speaking to you"

And aon the cah to the main room A medical orderly had been sumel: he ounded sorely, his wings torn and his eyes dimmed

Lord Asriel sat close by and threw a handful of herbs onto the coals in the brazier As Will had found with the sel’s body so he could see it more clearly

"Well, sir," he said, "what have you cos Please let me say them all before you speak My name is Baruch My companion Balthamos and I are of the rebels’ party, and so ere drawn to your standard as soon as you raised it But anted to bring you soo we ed to find our way to the heart of the Clouded Mountain, the Authority’s citadel in the Kingdom And there we learned"

He had to stop for a moment to breathe in the smoke of the herbs, which seemed to steady him He continued:

"We learned the truth about the Authority We learned that he has retired to a chamber of crystal deep within the Clouded Mountain, and that he no longer runs the daily affairs of the Kingdom Instead, he conte on his behalf, there is an angel called Metatron I have reason to know that angel well, though when I knew him"

Baruch’s voice faded Lord Asriel’s eyes were blazing, but he held his tongue and waited for Baruch to continue

"Metatron is proud," Baruch went on when he had recovered a little strength, "and his ambition is lio to be his Regent, and they laid their plans together They have a new plan, which my companion and I were able to discover The Authority considers that conscious beings of every kind have beco to intervene much more actively in human affairs They intend to move the Authority secretly away from the Clouded Mountain, to a permanent citadel soine of war The churches in every world are corrupt and weak, he thinks, they compromise too readily He wants to set up a perdon will be to destroy your Republic"

They were both treel and the man, but one from weakness and the other fro strength, and went on: