She was nearly asleep when the bolts clattered and the door opened. Light spilled in, and she was on her feet at once, with Pantalaimon hidden swiftly in her pocket.
As soon as the bear guard bent his head to lift the haunch of seal meat and throw it in, she was at his side, saying:
「Take me to lofur Raknison. Youll be in trouble if you dont. Its very urgent.」
He dropped the meat from his jaws and looked up. It wasnt easy to read bears expressions, but he looked angry.
「Its about lorek Byrnison,」 she said quickly. 「I know something about him, and the king o know.」
「Tell me what it is, and Ill pass the message on,」 said the bear.
「That wouldnt be right, not for someone else to know before the king does,」 she said. 「Im sorry, I doo be rude, but you see, its the rule that the king has to know things first.」
Perhaps he was slow-witted. At any rate, he paused, and then threw the meat into the cell before saying, 「Very well. You e with me.」
He led her out into the open air, for which she was grateful. The fog had lifted and there were stars glittering above the high-walled courtyard. The guard ferred with another bear, who came to speak to her.
「You ot see lofur Raknison when you please,」 he said. 「You have to wait till he wants to see you.」
「But this is urgent, what Ive got to tell him,」 she said. 「Its about lorek Byrnison. Im sure His Majesty would want to know it, but all the same I t tell it to anyone else, dont you see? It wouldnt be polite. Hed be ever so cross if he knew we hadnt been polite.」
That seemed to carry some weight, or else to mystify the bear suffitly to make him pause. Lyra was sure her interpretation of things was right: lofur Raknison was introdug so many new ways that none of the bears was certai how to behave, and she could exploit this uainty in order to get to lofur.
So that bear retreated to sult the bear above him, and before long Lyra was ushered ihe palace again, but into the state quarters this time. It was no er here, and in fact the air was even harder to breathe than in the cell, because all the natural stinks had been overlaid by a heavy layer of cloying perfume. She was made to wait in a corridor, then in an anteroom, then outside a large door, while bears discussed and argued and scurried bad forth, and she had time to look around at the preposterous decoration: the walls were rich with gilt plasterwork, some of which was already peeling off or crumbling with damp, and the florid carpets were trodden with filth.
Finally the large door ened from the inside. A blaze of light from half a dozen deliers, a crimson carpet, and more of that thick perfume hanging in the air; and the faces of a dozen or more bears, all gazing at her, none in armor but each with some kind of decoration: a golden necklace, a headdress of purple feathers, a crimson sash. Curiously, the room was also occupied by birds; terns and skuas perched on the plaster ice, and swooped low to snatch at bits of fish that had fallen out of one anothers s in the deliers.
And on a dais at the far end of the room, a mighty throne reared up high. It was made of granite for strength and mas-siveness, but like so many other things in lofurs palace, it was decorated with overelaborate swags aoons of gilt that looked like tinsel on a mountainside.
Sitting ohrone was the biggest bear she had ever seen. lofur Raknison was even taller and bulkier than lorek, and his f