On, said the alethiometer. Farther, higher.
So on they climbed. The witches flew above to spy out the best routes, because the hilly land soon gave way to steeper slopes and rocky footing, and as the sun rose toward noon, the travelers found themselves in a tangled land ullies, cliffs, and boulder-strewn valleys where not a single green leaf grew, and where the stridulation of is was the only sound.
They moved on, stopping only for sips of water from their goatskin flasks, and talking little.
Pantalaimon flew above Lyras head for a while until he tired of that, and then he became a little sure-footed mountain sheep, vain of his horns, leaping among rocks while Lyra scrambled laboriously alongside. Will moved on grimly, screwing up his eyes against the glare, ign the worsening pain from his hand, and finally reag a state in whient alone was good and stillness bad, so that he suffered more from resting than from toiling on. And sihe failure of the witches spell to stop his bleeding, he thought they were regarding him with fear, too, as if he was marked by some curse greater than their own powers.
At one point they came to a little lake, a patch of intense blue scarcely thirty yards across among the red rocks. They stopped there to drink and refill their flasks, and to soak their ag feet in the icy water. They stayed a few minutes and moved on, and soon afterward, when the sun was at its highest and hottest, Serafina Pekkala darted down to speak to them. She was agitated.
"I must leave you for a while," she said. "Lee Scoresby needs me. I dont know why. But he wouldnt call if he didnt need my help. Keep going, and Ill find you."
"Mr. Scoresby?" said Lyra, excited and anxious. "But where—"
But Serafina was gone, speeding out of sight before Lyra could finish the question. Lyra reached automatically for the alethiometer to ask what had happeo Lee Scoresby, but she let her hand drop, because shed promised to do no more than guide Will.
She looked across to him. He was sitting nearby, his hand held loosely on his knee and still slowly dripping blood, his face scorched by the sun and pale uhe burning.
"Will," she said, "dyou know why you have to find your father?"
"Its what Ive always known. My mother said Id take up my fathers mahats all I know."
"What does that mean, taking up his mantle? Whats a mantle?"
"A task, I suppose. Whatever hes been doing, Ive got to carry on. It makes as much sense as anything else."
He wiped the sweat out of his eyes with his right hand. What he couldnt say was that he longed for his father as a lost child yearns for home. That parison wouldnt have occurred to him, because home was the place he kept safe for his mother, not the place others kept safe for him.
But it had been five years now sihat Saturday m in the supermarket when the pretend game of hiding from the enemies became desperately real, such a long time in his life, and his heart craved to hear the words "Well done, well done, my child; no one oh could have doer; Im proud of you. e a now...."
Will longed for that so much that he hardly knew he did. It was just part of what everythi like. So he couldnt express that to Lyra now, though she could see it in his eyes, and that was new for her, too, to be quite so perceptive. The fact was that where Will was ed, she was developing a new kind of sense, as if he were simply more in focus than anyone shed known before