Once lorek Byrnison was out of sight, Lyra felt a great weakness ing over her, and she turned blindly a for Pantalaimon, 「Oh, Pan, dear, I t go on! Im shtened—and so tired—all this way, and Im scared to death! I wish it was someone else instead of me, I do holy!」
Her daemon nuzzled at her ne his cat form, warm and f.
「I just dont know what we got to do,」 Lyra sobbed. 「Its too much for us, Pan, we t...」
She g to him blindly, rog bad forth aing the sobs cry out wildly over the bare snow.
「And even if—if Mrs. Coulter got ter first, thered be no saving him, because shed take him back to Bolvangar, or worse, and theyd kill me out of vengeance....Why do they do these things to children, Pan? Do they all hate children so much, that they want to tear them apart like this? Why do they do it?」
But Pantalaimon had no answer; all he could do was hug her close. Little by little, as the storm of fear subsided, she came to a sense of herself again. She was Lyra, cold and frightened by all means, but herself.
「I wish...」 she said, and stopped. There was nothing that could be gained by wishing for it. A final deep shaky breath, and she was ready to go on.
The moon had set by now, and the sky to the south rofoundly dark, though the billions of stars lay on it like diamonds o. They were outshohough, by the Aurora, outshone a huimes. Never had Lyra seen it so brilliant and dramatic; with every twitd shiver, new miracles of light danced across the sky. And behind the ever-ging gauze of light, that other world, that sunlit city, was clear and solid.
The higher they climbed, the more the bleak land spread out below them. To the north lay the frozen sea, pacted here and there intes where two sheets of ice had pressed together, but otherwise flat and white and endless, reag to the Pole itself and far beyond, featureless, lifeless, colorless, and bleak beyond Lyras imagination. To the east a were more mountains, great jagged peaks thrusting sharply upward, their scarps piled high with snow and raked by the wind into bladelike edges as sharp as scimitars. To the south lay the way they had e, and Lyra looked most longingly back, to see if she could spy her dear friend lorek Byrnison and his troops; but nothing stirred on the wide plain. She was not even sure if she could see the burned wreckage of the zeppelin, or the crimson-stained snow around the corpses of the warriors.
Pantalaimon flew high, and swooped back to her wrist in his owl form.
「Theyre just beyond the peak!」 he said. 「Lord Asriels laid out all his instruments, and Roger t get away—」
And as he said that, the Aurora nickered and dimmed, like an anbaric bulb at the end of its life, and the out altogether. In the gloom, though, Lyra sehe presence of the Dust, for the air seemed to be full of dark iions, like the forms of thoughts not yet born.
In the enfolding dark she heard a cry:
「Lyra! Lyra!」
「Im ing!」 she cried back, and stumbled upward, clambering, sprawling, struggling, at the end of her strength; but hauling herself on and further on through the ghostly-gleaming snow.
「Lyra! Lyra!」
「Im nearly there,」 she gasped. 「Nearly there, Roger!」
Pantalaimon was ging rapidly, in his agitation: lion, ermine, eagle, wildcat, hare, salamander, owl, leopard, every form hed ever taken, a kaleidoscope of forms among the Dust—
「Lyra!」
Then she reached the summit, and saw what was happening.
Fi