Chapter Thirty-Five Dust and Roses
Thirty-Five
Dust and Roses
Malcolm and Lyra came to the door at the same moment, and she reached for the handle; but it wouldn’t turn.
“It’s locked!” she said.
“It can’t be—there’s no keyhole. Let me try.”
She moved aside and he twisted it firmly, with no result.
“You can usually feel what’s going on inside a lock,” he said, “but this doesn’t feel like a lock at all. It’s absolutely rigid. Can you hear anything?”
She put her head to the door. She was conscious of the warmth in the wood from the sunlight that had been shining on it, and of the slightly rough surface where a layer of varnish was beginning to peel off, and of the utter stillness beyond it.
“Nothing,” she said. “Can you remember—when we came through a couple of hours ago, or whenever it was—was this actual door the thing that opened the way? I mean, was the door on this side or on the other side, our side?”
“All I can remember was the complete shock I had when it opened. Let me try again—perhaps there’s a trick.”
He pulled the handle this way and that, trying to hear any telltale clicks or catches.
Asta, who’d been listening too, said, “People who came here with oil to trade would have to be able to open the door. Unless there’s a guild of doorkeepers or something who know the secret.”
“Let’s try knocking,” said Lyra, and did.
But it sounded solid, as if the wood of the door was cemented fast to a wall of brick. Perhaps it was, on this side; but everything on the other side was in a different world—
“I can hear something,” said Asta.
She was standing very close to the door, absolutely still. Lyra strained to hear, but there was only the constant grinding of earthmoving machines behind her and a heavy silence through the door.
Malcolm looked up at the roof of the little wooden structure. He could reach the edge of the cedar shingles on the roof, and worked them back and forth trying to dislodge one, but they were fastened securely.
“There!” said Lyra. “A man shouting.”
She pressed her head against the door again; something was happening through there, but nothing was clear.
Malcolm heard something too. He seized Lyra’s arm and pulled her away, and then the door exploded.
—
Inside, Colonel Schreiber and three of his men were killed at once.
Two others stumbled away in time. Pan lay stunned on the floor: the owl daemon dropped him in a fit of terror because not far off Olivier Bonneville was stabbing a clasp knife deep into the throat of Marcel Delamare.
The man writhed and kicked and tore at his killer’s hands, and as Pan came to his senses and saw what was happening, a fountain of blood shot high into the air.
Bonneville was sawing hard at Delamare’s neck, his own face now a scarlet mask of hatred and terror.
Then he let go of the knife and turned away sobbing as the life continued to spray out of the President of the High Council of the Magisterium.
Eventually the kicking stopped and the fountain became a trickle. In the same instant the owl daemon, who had been tearing at the sparrowhawk with the broken wing, vanished into a cloud of minute particles, which themselves faded rapidly into nothing.
Pan gathered his strength. There wasn’t much left. The fall had stunned him, and the explosion a moment later had thrown him some way across the floor.
He rolled over and sat up trembling. “Olivier,” he called. His voice was a thin croak. “Olivier!”
The boy was crouching on the bloodied floor, weeping and clutching his wounded daemon, sobbing like a little child, orphaned and desperate.
He didn’t respond. Pan wanted to go to him, but the floor was a lake of blood.
Where the folly with the copper roof had been there was a mass of shattered wood and billowing smoke.
The bomb had smashed everything nearby into splinters, and the opening into the rose world was crushed, obliterated, shredded to a cloud of shining fragments in midair.
—
Outside, Malcolm and Lyra lay where the explosion had thrown them, on the bare soil partway down the slope.
Their ears rang. Every sound was muffled; every sensation felt as though it was swathed in heavy cloth.
Lyra’s mouth had grit or sand or ash in it; she had to spit before she could make a sound, and even that was hard, because she could summon no saliva.
Malcolm had fallen heavily on the hip where he’d been shot, and despite the healing of Tilda Vasara and her bloodmoss, the wound was painful.
He could speak, though. He said, “Anything broken?”
Lyra could hardly hear him. She sat up with difficulty and shook her head, but her ears were still not functioning properly.
Her eyes were dazzled too, or else the air was filled with dazzlement.
She was reminded of the koruskati swarming around the cavern of the sorcerer, but these particles were smaller than the ones of fire.
Whatever light they had came from inside them; they weren’t lit by the sun of the rose world, and some were darkened by the elsewhere they came from.
Little by little Lyra realized what they must be: splinters and shards and tiny broken pieces of what was once visible through the opening—in other words, her own world. The way through was shattered.
“Oh,” she cried, “no, no, no!”
Malcolm was struggling to get up, but his leg looked as if he couldn’t move it at all.
“Lyra! What is it? Are you hurt?”
Now she was sobbing too, crying with anguish. “Malcolm—the opening—they’ve blown it up…”
She was trembling, trying to clear her mouth and her eyes and her ears, as close to despair as she had been under the silver guillotine at Bolvangar.
Then she felt a touch on her leg. She reached out and felt the rich fur of Asta, and thought for a moment it was Pan, though she knew it wasn’t; this touch was strange even though it was familiar, after her days with Malcolm’s daemon.
And Asta was speaking to her, but her words were too faint to hear.
“Asta? I can’t hear you—Asta, are you safe? Are you all right?”
She climbed onto Lyra’s lap and up into her arms.
Malcolm called, “Tell her what you told me!”
“What? What?” said Lyra.
Asta pressed her face against Lyra’s cheek and spoke again. Lyra felt the vibration through her bones, but the words weren’t clear. Realizing that, Asta pressed her paw against Lyra’s breast pocket.
“What is it? What do you mean?” Lyra managed to say.
As she felt for the same place, Lyra had a vivid memory of crouching in the dim corridor of the nuncio’s house, carving tiny pieces of steel away from the lock with the point of the needle, while Asta watched out for it when it fell.
“I…” Lyra’s head swam. “Yes. I remember. With the…”
And now she had to do something even harder. Her shaking hand felt through the cotton of the shirt pocket, and found the little paper bundle still in place.
“Careful,” Asta said.
Lyra heard that a little more clearly, and coughed and tried to clear her throat.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she whispered hoarsely. “Watch if it falls.”
“What are you doing?” called Malcolm.
“Cutting through. What’s going on down there?”
She meant the roadbuilding. Some of the great machines had stopped, or had throttled back their engines, but her eyes weren’t focusing properly, and there still seemed to be clouds inside her vision.
Asta spoke for Malcolm: “Some of the workers are coming up here to see what happened. About five or six men. Apart from them, it’s all carrying on like before.”
“Was it very loud, the explosion? I couldn’t tell.”
“Yes, very.”
“And the building…”
“It must have all gone.”
“Everything? All the pictures? The painting?”
“It sounded like everything falling. Everything.”
Lyra, unfolding the paper, tried to look back at where the door had been, the door and the little wooden building behind it; but there was nothing of it left. Perhaps it was just her eyes, she thought, with a wild hope. Then her fingers found the needle.
“Here. Look, I’m just going to wipe my fingers—they’re covered in grit.”
She pushed the needle into the seam of her coat to keep it safe and rubbed her fingers hard on her skirt. She could hear a little better now; Malcolm was explaining something to the workmen, and then a supervisor called them back to work, and they went without any more curiosity.
“I’ve got to find…a place to start cutting,” Lyra said, removing the needle. “Oh, please…Don’t let there be nothing at all…But it’s so hard to see…”
She was talking half to herself, and Asta saw that and didn’t reply. Lyra tried to stand up, only to find every limb weak and trembling, and a horrible dizziness engulfing her. Asta saw that too.
“Lyra, listen. About an arm’s length away to your left there’s a broken tree trunk. If you reach out you could hold on to it.”
“Don’t take your eyes off—”
“The needle. I’m not.”
Lyra kept her eyes closed so as not to be overcome by the dizziness and felt out till her hand met the slender trunk.
“Right,” she said. “Here I am. Now, let’s have a look.”
She steadied herself and opened her eyes.
The air seemed to be full of swirling particles that might have been water vapor or motes of dust. The place where the door had stood in its frame, and where the building stood behind it, had become just another empty little piece of land, where rough grass grew between stones.
Malcolm called, “Lyra? What can you see?”
“Not very much. Just let me concentrate.”
She tried to focus on what was close. She could see the shattered tree trunk; she could even see that it had been a willow. But the particles in the air—if only they’d keep still…
“Asta,” she said. “Can you see these floating specks in the air?”
“Yes, millions of them.”
“Are they all moving? Or are some of them still? I can’t tell.”
It would have been hard to see even if she had her full sight. But it did seem to her that among the myriad drifting tiny shadows and glints, there were some that didn’t move.
“Not very many,” said Asta, “but yes, some.”