The iion craft was being piloted by Mrs. Coulter. She and her daemon were alone in the cockpit.
The barometric altimeter was little use iorm, but she could judge her altitude roughly by watg the fires on the ground that blazed where angels fell; despite the hurtling rain, they were still flaring high. As for the course, that wasnt difficult, either: the lightning that flickered around the Mountain served as a brilliant bea. But she had to avoid the various flying beings who were still fighting in the air, and keep clear of the rising land below.
She didnt use the lights, because she wao get close and find somewhere to land before they saw her and shot her down. As she flew closer, the updrafts became more violent, the gusts more sudden and brutal. A gyropter would have had no ce: the savage air would have slammed it to the ground like a fly. Iention craft she could move lightly with the wind, adjusting her balance like a wave rider in the Peaceable O.
Cautiously she began to climb, peering forward, ign the instruments and flying by sight and by instinct. Her daemo from one side of the little glass to the other, looking ahead, above, to the left and right, and calling to her stantly. The lightning, great sheets and lances of brilliance, flared and cracked above and around the mae. Through it all she flew itle aircraft, gaini little by little, and always moving on toward the cloud-hung palace.
And as Mrs. Coulter approached, she foutention dazzled and bewildered by the nature of the Mountain itself.
It reminded her of a certain abominable heresy, whose author was now deservedly languishing in the dungeons of the sistorial Court. He had suggested that there were more spatial dimensions thahree familiar ohat on a very small scale, there were up to seven ht other dimensions, but that they were impossible to examine directly. He had even structed a model to show how they might work, and Mrs. Coulter had seen the object before it was exorcised and burned. Folds within folds, ers and edges both taining and being tained: its inside was everywhere and its outside was everywhere else. The Clouded Mountain affected her in a similar way: it was less like a rock than like a force field, manipulating space itself to enfold and stretd layer it into galleries and terraces, chambers and nades and watchtowers of air and light and vapor.
She felt a straation welling slowly in her breast, and she saw at the same time how t the aircraft safely up to the clouded terra the southern flank. The little craft lurched and strained iurbid air, but she held the course firm, and her daemon guided her down to land oerrace.
The light shed seen by till now had e from the lightning, the occasional gashes in the cloud where the sun struck through, the fires from the burning angels, the beams of an-baric searchlights; but the light here was different. It came from the substance of the Mountain itself, which glowed and faded in a slow breathlike rhythm, with a mother-of-pearl radiance.
Woman and daemon got down from the craft and looked around to see which way they should go.
She had the feeling that other beings were moving rapidly above and below, speeding through the substance of the Mountain itself with messages, orders, information. She couldhem; all she could see was fusing, infolded perspectives of aircase, terrace, and facade.
Before she could make up her mind which way to go, she heard voices and withd