They say that the Magisterium is assembling the greatest army ever known, and this is an advance party. And there are unpleasant rumors about some of the soldiers, Serafina Pekkala. Ive heard about Bolvangar, and what they were doing there—cutting childrens daemons away, the most evil work Ive ever heard of. Well, it seems there is a regiment of warriors who have beeed in the same way. Do you know the word zombi? They fear nothing, because theyre mindless. There are some in this town now. The authorities keep them hidden, but wets out, and the townspeople are terrified of them."
"What of the other witch s?" said Serafina Pekkala. "What news do you have of them?"
"Most have gone back to their homelands. All the witches are waiting, Serafina Pekkala, with fear in their hearts, for what will happe."
"And what do you hear of the Church?"
"Theyre in plete fusion. You see, they dont know what Lord Asriel intends to do."
"Nor do I," she said, "and I t imagine what it might be. What do you think hes intending, Dr.
Lanselius?"
He gently rubbed the head of his serpent daemon with his thumb.
"He is a scholar," he said after a moment, "but scholarship is not his ruling passion. Nor is statesmanship. I met him once, and I thought he had an ardent and powerful nature, but not a despotie. I dont think he wants to rule.... I dont know, Serafina Pekkala. I suppose his servant might be able to tell you. He is a man called Thorold, and he was imprisoned with Lord Asriel in the house on Svalbard. It might be worth a visit there to see if he tell you anything; but, of course, he might have goo the other world with his master."
"Thank you. Thats a good idea.... Ill do it. And Ill go at once."
She said farewell to the sul and flew up through the gathering dark to join Kaisa in the clouds.
Serafinas jouro the north was made harder by the fusion in the world around her. All the Arctic peoples had been thrown into panid so had the animals, not only by the fog and the magic variations but by unseasonal crags of id stirrings in the soil. It was as if the earth itself, the permafrost, were slowly awakening from a long dream of being frozen.
In all this turmoil, where sudden shafts of uny brilliance lanced down through rents in towers of fog and then vanished as quickly, where herds of muskox were seized by the urge to gallop south and then wheeled immediately to the west or the north again, where tight-knit skeins of geese disied into a honking chaos as the magic fields they flew by wavered and shis way and that, Serafina Pekkala sat on her cloud-pine and flew north, to the house on the headland in the wastes of Svalbard.
There she found Lord Asriels servant, Thorold, fighting off a group of cliff-ghasts.
She saw the movement before she came close enough to see what was happening. There was a swirl of lungihery wings, and a malevolent yowk-yowk-yowk resounding in the snowy courtyard. A single figure swathed in furs fired a rifle into the midst of them with a gaunt dog daemon snarling and snapping beside him whenever one of the filthy things flew low enough.
She didnt know the man, but a cliff-ghast was an enemy always. She swung around above and loosed a dozen arrows into the melee. With shrieks and gibberings, the gang—too loosely ao be called a troop—circled, saw their new oppo, and fled in fusion. A mier the skies were bare again, and their dismayed yowk-yowk-yowk echo