Chapter Two The Infirmary #4
The sky was silent. On the ground and in the undergrowth along the river little creatures were beginning to stir, as if they’d been terrified into stillness while the combat was going on above.
Then Pan heard something else: the beating of great wings, the rush of air through feathers, and a single long scream of triumph.
Gulya looked up and spread her wings, beating them hard, shaking the last drops of water off them. He saw both her intense pride and her incurable shame, and felt a pulse of admiration for her.
“Wait here,” she said. “Hold yourself calm, and bow with respect when they land. Say nothing until you’re asked.”
Then she sprang up on her lion feet and leapt into the air, circling above the river, catching the faint breeze, her little form climbing higher and disappearing into the dark.
Pan lay on the bank, loosening his muscles as much as he could, taking in his injuries and the particular form of his fatigue. He stretched, flexing his spine, working his jaw, and he wondered what he could say to Gulya’s kin, and how much he should conceal.
A few minutes passed. Then he heard voices in the air, and a rush of wind, and then two—three—four immense beasts landed on the grass.
Pan could see their great wing tips spread like fingers against the starry sky, their lion feet grasping the soil, their savage eyes glaring red as they sought him out among the shadows.
They stood facing him like stone sculptures that had just stepped down from a Persian temple.
He didn’t have to remember how to behave: he stood because he couldn’t help it, and bowed his head because he was overwhelmed.
Last of all came little Gulya, sweeping down between him and the others. She tilted her body up and beat her wings inwards, and hovered a moment before dropping to the grass as lightly as a wren.
“Pantalaimon,” said one of the gryphons; Pan couldn’t see which. The voice, coming as it did through an eagle’s throat with the power of a lion’s chest, seemed to make the ground tremble as much as the air.
Pan bowed his head again, from politeness, but then raised it high and gazed from one to another of the mighty forms.
“I am Pantalaimon,” he said, thinking that he mustn’t let Lyra down. He must show all the confidence and presence of her at her best. “I want to thank you for fighting off those birds, whose name I can’t remember. I hope none of you were wounded in the combat.”
“Say less,” said Gulya quietly.
“What has Lyra Silvertongue lost?” asked one of the gryphons.
It wasn’t easy to see which of them was speaking, nor whether it was the same speaker as before, nor whether the speaker was male or female, nor whether he or she had some kind of authority over the others.
“Her imagination,” he said.
“Why do you think it is in Karamakan?”
“I have searched all Europe for it in vain. I have spoken to the author of a book that made it flee, and found that he knew nothing. I know that the enemies of the imagination are gathering their forces to invade the desert of Karamakan, and I believe they think that something in that desert nurtures the imagination and allows it to flourish, so they are going to destroy it, whatever it is and wherever they find it. I want to find Lyra’s imagination and save it from them, and with its help, with her help, with her, I want to defend the imagination and fight its enemies. ”
He worried that he’d said too much, but he could hardly have explained it in fewer words. When he’d finished, he stood still, trying to look into those terrifying red eyes, and having to drop his gaze more than once; but he always raised it again, and faced them.
“What is this imagination?” said a different gryphon voice. “Gulya, what do you know?”
“I believe it is a way of seeing. To see as we do, not as worms do.”
“Is that your understanding, Pantalaimon?” said the first gryphon.
“Yes. My person, Lyra Silvertongue, saw like that once. She saw everything and everyone in a light of gold. She saw correspondences and analogies and echoes and resemblances, so that nothing existed without a thousand connections to the world, and I saw them with her. For her the world was rich with meaning and alive with delight. Then little by little this way of seeing left her, so I set off to find it and bring it back.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. I hope she is safe. I know she is alive, because otherwise I would be dead. I am her. She is me. We are one being, and we disagreed, and we were very unhappy.”
“How will you travel to Karamakan?”
“As I have traveled so far. Along the surface of the earth.”
“Your enemies are moving faster.”
“Then I must waste no time.”
“Why did you save Gulya? You might easily have left her to the oghab-gorgs, with no dishonor.”
“I beg your pardon, but I don’t know how to address you. How should I do that?”
“You say ‘Your Excellency.’ ”
“Thank you. Well, Your Excellency, to answer your question I shall have to disagree with you. To leave Gulya at the mercy of that creature would have been a matter of great dishonor.”
“But you did not know who she was.”
“I would have saved any creature rather than lose honor.”
This caused the four gryphons to murmur together, to move closer to one another, to bend their heads together.
Pan felt a curious combination of emotions: pride, in saying the words he’d just said and finding that he meant them; apprehension, for he had not the slightest idea how the great creatures would react to this little English-speaking daemon; and love, love for Lyra, love for Nur Huda, love for Gulya.
But it wasn’t complex; it was simple. These were all one thing.
The gryphons turned to face him again.
“We want to know more about this imagination. It seems to us that it is a matter of concern for every creature in our worlds. You must come with us and explain everything you can to our queen.”
That voice seemed to come from one who hadn’t spoken before. It was lighter and more musical, and even sympathetic.
Pan gathered his courage and said, “But, Your Excellencies, I have a task to do, and I must not step aside from it. I would be honored to speak to your queen, but if it means losing a single day on my journey, I must respectfully say no.”
This time it was Gulya who replied, and as she spoke she sprang into the air and flew around, beating her wings in rage.
“What do you think you’re saying? How dare you be so insolent? I won’t have it. If you are invited to visit Her Celestial Majesty Queen Shahrnavāz, you do not refuse! Now you must apologize and beg to withdraw your refusal. Do so at once!”
And she landed on the grass in front of him, bristling with such fury that she seemed to throw out little darts of it, invisible sparks that scorched the air as they flew and stung him like bees.
It would have been funny, but he was so tired.
He wanted to sleep for a thousand years.
So he bowed to the little gryphon, and to her companions, and said, “I beg your pardon, Your Excellencies. I have learned a lesson tonight. I will gladly visit your queen and answer any questions she has. My only questions to you are: How shall I make that journey, and how far is it?”
“Climb onto my back,” said the sympathetic gryphon who’d spoken last, and she knelt to make it possible.
Pan sprang up, and found her back broad and muscular and warm.
He lay between her wings, where the eagle’s feathers gave way to the lion’s fur, and felt a mighty surge of power and movement as she leapt into the star-filled sky.
He felt utterly safe, and exhilarated, and full of wonder; and a moment later he fell into the deepest sleep of his life.
—
In the garrison town of Kücüklü in the southeast of Anatolia there was a military prison, and the prison had a small infirmary, where captives uncooperative enough to resist torture were sent to reflect on their obstinacy.
If they didn’t seem inclined to do that, the infirmary was, after all, a convenient place to die.
Some weeks after Sebastian Makepeace’s visit to Battersea, in fact on the very night when Lyra was rescuing Nur Huda’s daemon over a hundred miles to the south, a young man lay in the Kücüklü infirmary, half-conscious and sweating with pain.
He’d been discovered unconscious on the train when it made an unscheduled stop, and he was clearly a criminal; no innocent person, having been shot, would have tried to conceal his wound like that unless he wanted to avoid the attention of the police.
Accordingly, Malcolm Polstead was taken directly to the prison hospital, where if he’d had the slightest sense of responsibility he would have died promptly. He’d lost quite enough blood.
However, he was clearly stubborn as well as criminal, and unusual too, for a man of violence.
The prison governor was new to his job, with enough spare intelligence to have cultivated an interest in archaeology, and he was intrigued by the papers discovered in Malcolm’s pocket, listing his scholarly credentials. A fellow archaeologist!
He brushed his neat military mustache upwards and sent for the medical orderly at once.
“That fellow Peters, the man who was shot. The Englishman.”
“What about him?” said the orderly. “Colonel.”
The insolence was only in the timing, but it was there.
“Is he losing a lot of blood?”
“Yeah. Won’t be with us long.”
“I want him seen by a specialist. He might need a transfusion. Where’s Dr. Osman?”
“Gone home.”
“Send for him at once. Then come with me to the infirmary.”