“In central Siberia there is a region of devastation. Thousands of years ago there was a prosperous city there, the centre of an empire of craftsmen and traders that reached from Novgorod to Mongolia. But they made war with the spirit world, and their capital was destroyed by a blast of fire. Nothing has lived there since—plant, insect, bird or mammal.”
Lyra thought she knew what the spirit world meant. It meant another universe, like Will’s, or like the world of Cittàgazze. If there had been contact between this universe and another, thousands of years ago, long before the way of cutting through from one universe to another with the subtle knife had been invented, that was very interesting and she wanted to know more; but she reined in her interest quickly, because she didn’t want to alert Pan.
She knew exactly where he was and what he was doing, and she didn’t want him to stop it. Just at that moment he was investigating the rack of cloud-pine branches outside the consul’s house, and trying to divine which of them belonged to Serafina Pekkala’s clan, because he had the idea that if he and Lyra tried really hard, they might eventually be able to bypass the alethiometer and discover things by mental power alone. Lyra thought this was crazy, but she was glad he was concentrating on it, because she didn’t want him to overhear her questions to Dr. Lanselius.
“So the witches—the young witches go there with their dæmons, before they’re able to separate, and the witches go into this devastated place and the dæmons are afraid to?”
“As I understand it, yes.”
Nothing would soften Lyra’s memory of the moment she had done a similar thing to Pantalaimon. As she remembered his terrified whimpering puppy-form crouching on the jetty, she felt hot tears of guilt brimming in her eyes, and she could hardly speak. She swallowed several times and said:
“When…after the…when they’ve gone across, and they’ve found their dæmons again…do they talk about it? Do their dæmons tell them what they did when they were apart?”
The witch consul was a shrewd man. His broad and florid face was not expressive, because he had trained himself to be diplomatically non-committal; but he knew when to allow his eyes the animation of sympathy.
“Don’t laugh at me,” Lyra said, and outside in the mud Pantalaimon pricked up his pine-marten ears.
Dr. Lanselius’s own dæmon, a slender serpent, flowed from his shoulder down to the floor, and in a moment or two—the room was not a large one—she had climbed to the window sill. Both Lyra and the consul were watching her, and when Dr. Lanselius sensed something and relaxed, she felt the change in his attention and looked at him.
“Your dæmon has found plenty to occupy his curiosity,” he said. “He won’t hear what we say now unless you tell him. But be frank with me; ask me what you want to know.”
And Lyra remembered her previous visit to the consul, along with Farder Coram. The old gyptian’s guile was equal to the situation, and recalling now what Farder Coram had done, Lyra said:
“I haven’t got much time, Dr. Lanselius, and I don’t even know the best question to ask. So if you were me, and knowing what you do of what concerns me now, what question would you ask of the Consul of the Witches?”
He smiled, and said, “I remember the last time I was asked that question. How is the excellent Farder Coram?”
“He hasn’t been well. He nearly died of pneumonia, but he’s recovering. Tell me, Dr. Lanselius! Tell me what question I should ask.”
“You should ask the Consul of the Witches to tell you what Serafina Pekkala did in the same case as yours. She had the same doubts.”
“Did she?”
“Oh, yes. Her dæmon, Kaisa—and yours, and every witch’s—felt a great betrayal. But witches and their dæmons know that this is to come; they know they’ll be tested. You did not. For you and your dæmon it was worse. Nevertheless, Kaisa and Serafina Pekkala suffered too, and she thought his coldness to her afterwards was worse than the suffering of separation itself.”
“So what did she do?”
“She waited, and treated him kindly, and said nothing.”
“She didn’t ask? Even though she wanted to know what he’d done and how he’d managed and everything?”
“Not a word.”
“And…did he ever tell her?”
“No.”
“I thought there were no secrets between us and our dæmons,” said Lyra, feeling obscurely hurt.
“Then what are you doing in here, asking me this? Aren’t you trying to conceal this from your dæmon?”
“No! Not conceal…I just want to do what’s right. Because no one who isn’t a witch knows what it feels like…And I can’t ask anyone but you, because it’s a secret, a real deep secret, that Pan and I can do this. I trusted you, right, because you know the witches…But I’ve never told anyone else, in this world I mean, not even Farder Coram. And I do want to know what’s right, you see. I don’t want to put pressure on Pan if I shouldn’t. I’d ask Serafina Pekkala herself if I could, but…It’s so difficult.”
She’d been looking at the coffee pot, and at the floor, and at the tiled stove, and at the bookshelves, but now she looked at his broad and subtle face.
“Yes,” he said. “I see that. It’s not as if your position was a common one. And I haven’t got much comfort for you; all I can tell you is what those who have experienced the same thing have told me.”
“I just have to keep on not knowing,” Lyra said unhappily, “and knowing that he’s holding something back…And the one person I could really talk to about it, who’d really understand every little detail, I’ll never see again.”
“Not the only person.”
“Yes,” said Lyra firmly.
“Would you like me to pass on a message to Serafina Pekkala for you?”
“Yes…No. It’s not
