Chapter Thirty-Two The Pieces Gather on the Board #4
Pan could tell, even from a distance, that Olivier Bonneville was no great horseman.
In fact, it looked as though he would very much rather get off and walk.
It didn’t take long for Pan to find him, even with the disadvantage of having to look through the grass, but there were occasional shrubs of juniper or tamarisk he could climb up and spy from, and the ground wasn’t completely flat.
He followed throughout the day, stopping whenever Bonneville did and being careful not to doze off and lose him.
Despite his uncertain progress (stopping to adjust the saddle or to tighten the girth or to sit down and rest or to fill his water bottle or to look at one of the horse’s hooves or to look slowly all around the horizon), it was obvious that Bonneville had a clear idea of where he was going.
Late in the afternoon he stopped again, and this time he looked intently in one direction ahead of him, persuading the horse to stand still, rising uncertainly in the stirrups to see a little further through some binoculars, and unfolding a map to peer at it closely.
Pan watched from a small willow a couple of hundred yards behind him as the sun was going down, and saw the boy dismount stiffly before stretching and bending and then taking off the saddle and hitching the horse to a broken tree.
His daemon, the hawk with the broken wing, was still clutching the saddle; Bonneville lifted her off and settled her tenderly on the tree.
There must have been a stream or a pond nearby.
Bonneville loosened the rein and the horse bent to drink.
Was he going to camp for the night? It was getting dark quickly; so yes, he was.
Pan moved down from his willow and padded silently through the grass till he was near enough to hear the conversation between Bonneville and the daemon.
At first he thought they were speaking a language he didn’t know at all, but as he lay still he began to recognize a word here, a phrase there, and almost make sense of complete sentences now and then.
It seemed to be a dialect of Italian, and then he thought it was mainly German, and then possibly a little French.
However, what they said wasn’t very interesting; Bonneville mainly seemed to be grumbling, and the daemon seemed to be agreeing.
Bonneville broke a branch off the tree and gathered a few sticks to make a fire, but without much success at first. He got through a lot of matches before it caught properly, and by that time the flames provided the only light, because the sun was fully set.
Pan watched as he carried the daemon to a lower branch and settled himself down to cook a piece of meat.
The fire wasn’t hot enough, and the meat kept falling off his stick and into the ash.
Pan remembered the deft and effortless way Tilda Vasara had cooked that rabbit in the mountains, and felt almost sorry for this urban boy, so clumsy and helpless; but he couldn’t help being impressed by his determination.
He waited till Bonneville and his daemon were asleep. Then with great care he moved towards the dead tree and climbed up towards the daemon, testing each claw-hold before putting his weight on it, making no noise at all.
He made his way very slowly along the branch, and stopped when he came close enough to reach out and touch her.
“Daemon,” he whispered. “Daemon of Olivier Bonneville.”
He’d done this before. It was sometimes possible to wake someone gently by waking their daemon, but that wasn’t his intention now.
“Daemon, what is your name?” he whispered.
“Arethusa,” she murmured, still asleep.
“Arethusa, I don’t want to wake Olivier. I just want to talk to you. Don’t wake him up.”
“No.” Her voice was low and tender.
Pan went on: “What does he want?”
“He wants his father.”
Pan was startled, but only for a moment. “His father the physicist?”
She stirred a little, but said nothing.
“And what does he want with Lyra?” said Pan.
“Sister.”
That shook Pan even more.
“Arethusa, I don’t know what you mean. Is Lyra his sister?”
“Yes. Half sister. Same mother.”
“Mrs. Coulter was his mother?”
“Of course.”
“Does he…Has he, have you always known that?”
“No. He realized it only recently. It shocked him to realize that Marcel Delamare was his uncle.”
“Marcel Delamare…”
“The President of the High Council of the Magisterium. Olivier’s mother was Delamare’s sister.”
Pan trembled. The connection with Lyra fired his curiosity. “So if Lyra’s his sister, Delamare is her uncle too,” he said.
“Yes.”
Pan was taken aback. “I don’t think she knows it,” he said slowly.
“Delamare does.”
“And what does he want?”
“To capture her for her grandmother to play with.”
That made Pan feel chilled at once, colder than he’d ever felt flying through the night sky. “Mrs. Coulter’s mother is still alive?”
“Only her malice keeps her alive. Death is afraid to come near her.” The hawk daemon shifted on her perch. Olivier Bonneville turned over in his sleeping bag.
“Don’t wake up,” Pan whispered.
Bonneville murmured something that might have been a name.
Pan said quietly, “Does he know what happened to his father?”
“Undone by Delamare. Framed. All lies. So many lies.”
Well, Pan thought, what did that mean? But both boy and daemon were restive now; it was time to leave. Without another word he turned away and climbed silently down into the grass again, and set off in the direction he remembered Bonneville heading, towards the red building. His mind was racing.
—
The witch Tilda Vasara flew on a long loop to the east. She was interested in the progress of the army Delamare had sent that way, knowing the unpredictable ways of the wandering lake. The only safe way to cross Lop Nor was through the air above it, and surely they knew that?
But evidently they didn’t. With the valor of fanaticism and the armor of righteousness, the soldiers of the Authority forced their way forward into the marshes, into the innumerable torrents and the new waterways and the old riverbeds, the mires and the quicksands.
Tilda Vasara flew above, watching it all with sorrow.
Some of these men were brave and handsome, some of them were foolish or cowardly; some hoped for salvation, some hoped only for treasure; some were kindly and some were corrupt, but the lakes and the fens and the shades of death gave every one of them the same welcome.
And the witch saw it all, with wonderment and pity.