Chapter Twenty-Six The Hard Problem #3
Dilyara went back to bed, where she warmed her feet against Strauss’s legs. He didn’t wake up.
—
Lyra stood beside Malcolm for a minute getting a sense of everything: the sky filled with immense gryphon wings, the grassy ground studded all over with fires that gave off the smell of cooking and the tang of pine smoke, the swift here-and-there darting of witches taking messages or gathering herbs, voices rising in disputation or giving orders.
Malcolm strode to the center, where Gulya and Prince Keshvād were waiting.
Lyra went with him, and Gulya raised her wings.
For Lyra, who had never had time to look fully at a gryphon in daylight, it was a marvel to see her full-grown and beautiful, glowing with power and assurance, stretching out her wings and delighting in their majestic length.
She reflected that the gryphons had a strangeness and a presence she had hardly known since her first glimpse of Iorek Byrnison.
Prince Keshvād was more reserved than Gulya, dignified, almost haughty, but he saw the circlet around Lyra’s brow, and nodded deeply to her. She bowed her head in return.
Malcolm was already deep in conversation with another older gryphon, whose lion fur was scattered with white hairs and his eagle feathers deep bronze.
They were looking at a map that Malcolm was unfolding.
Lyra didn’t want to be in the way, so she wandered across the grassy headland, watching all the activity, wondering how an army of such beings provisioned itself, and what they used for weapons, if they needed anything apart from their terrifying beaks and claws, and how they could defend themselves against the forces of the Magisterium; and, all the time, of course, what she would find inside the red building, and what she could do about it.
She sat down at a spot overlooking the sea, and noticed two or three fishing boats already making their way out over the choppy waves. There was hardly any wind, but the sea was still disturbed after the storm; the sun dashed sparks of light from the water, and warmed her face and hands.
Lyra heard a rush of air through pine needles, and turned to see a witch alighting beside her, as if she were a particle manifesting itself in some great field of the air.
The witch said, “You are Lyra Silvertongue.”
She was young, and her voice was familiar.
“Have I seen you before?” Lyra said. “I seem to know your voice.”
“My mother was Serafina Pekkala.”
“Oh! And—”
“She died. She was killed by a missionary.”
She told Lyra the story as Pan had already heard it. Lyra wept.
“And you killed him?” she said when she could control her voice.
“The missionary, and everyone with him.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I loved Serafina more than I can say. Oh, and Farder Coram…”
She realized what the news would do to the old man, and found it hard to say any more.
“Coram? He was my father,” said the witch.
“No! Really? Did he know? Did you ever see him?”
“No. I only know what Serafina told me. They had a son, who died, and then I came after, but he had gone back to his people.”
“He never knew about you. This will be joyful news for him, except about Serafina…What’s your name?”
“Tuuli Latvala. I was the witch who fought the sorcerer with you last night.”
Lyra stood up and embraced her. The meeting would have been joyful; perhaps one day she’d look back and remember it with joy; but her feelings now were too strong for speech.
They wept together, and then felt calmer. Tuuli sat down beside Lyra, and they watched as the army gathered around them.
“When we heard that you were here, we had to come,” said Tuuli.
“Thank you. Thank you. For the first time I feel hopeful.”
“The first time for how long?”
Lyra told her about her unhappiness with Pan, and about the murder of Roderick Hassall, and about her and Malcolm’s discoveries in the dead man’s rucksack; everything.
“And who is that man, Malcolm?”
“He saved my life when he was a young boy and I was a baby. He…he is a very good friend.”
“Not lover?”
Lyra had forgotten how frank the witches could be. “Not, er…” she said carefully. “He, he made my coronet.”
Tuuli looked at it curiously. Her own, of bright forget-me-nots, was interwoven with her shining black hair. “He made that?”
“He’s an artificer from the realms of gold.”
“And he’s commanding this army.”
Tuuli looked around. Lyra thought she had the same eyes as Serafina; and if she was Coram’s daughter, she must be some years older than Lyra herself, though she looked so young.
“What do the witches know about this campaign?” Lyra asked.
“Someone is destroying the air and the seasons. The gryphons are going to find out who, and why.”
“Have witches ever fought beside gryphons before?”
“No, never. They are strange, aren’t they? The little one, in the cave, who fought the sorcerer…So fierce.”
“She killed him because he put a curse on her to make her stay young and small.”
“It’s a hard problem. There are some people so bad, all you can do is kill them.”
Lyra wondered if she agreed with that. She remembered Farder Coram—Tuuli’s father, after all—saying much the same thing when she last saw him.
They were looking out over the sea. Behind them a voice—a gryphon’s voice—shouted orders.
They turned to watch, and saw Prince Keshvād spreading his wings and beating them so powerfully that Lyra and Tuuli felt the wind from where they sat.
He threw his head back and uttered an eagle scream, and then leapt into the air, followed by dozens, hundreds of others, their gold-bronze-brown plumage glowing in the sun, their claws extended.
They took off in ranks, disciplined and majestic, setting their course towards the east, following the prince and climbing higher and higher over the sea.
Lyra stood up and gathered her rucksack. “Stay close to me if you can,” she said to Tuuli. “I’d like to talk to you again.”
“Of course. We are sisters now.”
Malcolm was standing and beckoning to her, and Gulya stood next to him, looking all around at the gryphon warriors as they leapt into the air and sped up and over the sea, joining the great force ahead of them.
Lyra was more than nervous but not quite frightened as Malcolm helped her up onto the broadly muscled back of Gulya.
She had little time to think; Malcolm cried out, “Yes!” to some words from the gryphon, and then the wide wings beat, and all the complex bones and muscles, nerves and blood and life surged up into the air, and Lyra clung to Malcolm as they left the ground behind and set off through the sky to Karamakan.