The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials Book 2

Author:Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials Book 2 [2, Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials Book]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com)
Published: 2010-12-22T05:00:00+00:00

Ten minutes later they stood in the little square at the foot of the Tower of the Angels. Will had told her about the snake daemon, and she had stopped still in the street, tormented again by that half-memory. Who was the old man? Where had she seen him? It was no good; the memory wouldn't come clear.

"I didn't want to tell him" Lyra said quietly, "but I saw a man up there last night. He looked down when the kids were making all that noise. . . ."

"What did he look like?"

"Young, with curly hair. Not old at all. But I saw him for only a moment, at the very top, over those battlements. I thought he might be. . . You remember Angelica and Paolo, and Paolo said they had an older brother, and he'd come into the city as well, and she made Paolo stop telling us, as if it was a secret? Well, I thought it might be him. He might be after this knife as well. And I reckon all the kids know about it. I think that's the real reason why they come back in the first place."

"Mmm," he said, looking up. "Maybe."

She remembered the children talking earlier that morning. No children would go in the tower, they'd said; there were scary things in there. And she remembered her own feeling of unease as she and Pantalaimon had looked through the open door before leaving the city. Maybe that was why they needed a grown man to go in there. Her daemon was fluttering around her head now, moth-formed in the bright sunlight, whispering anxiously.

"Hush," she whispered back, "there en't any choice, Pan. It's our fault. We got to make it right, and this is the only way." Will walked off to the right, following the wall of the tower. At the corner a narrow cobbled alley led between it and the next building, and Will went down there too, looking up, getting the measure of the place. Lyra followed. Will stopped under a window at the second-story level and said to Panta-laimon, "Can you fly up there? Can you look in?"

He became a sparrow at once and set off. He could only just reach it. Lyra gasped and gave a little cry when he was at the windowsill, and he perched there for a second or two before diving down again. She sighed and took deep breaths like someone rescued from drowning. Will frowned, puzzled.

"It's hard," she explained, "when your daemon goes away from you. It hurts."

"Sorry. Did you see anything?" he said. "Stairs," said Pantalaimon. "Stairs and dark rooms. There were swords hung on the wall, and spears and shields, like a museum. And I saw the young man. He was . . . dancing."

"Dancing?"

"Moving to and fro, waving his hand about. Or as if he was fighting something invisible. . . I just saw him through an open door. Not clearly."

"Fighting a Specter?" Lyra guessed. But they couldn't guess any better, so they moved on.

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