“Where are you?” he said.
“Beside you,” said the angel. “This way.”
The sun was newly risen, and the rocks and the lichens and mosses on them shone crisp and brilliant in the morning light, but nowhere could he see a figure.
“I said we would be harder to see in daylight,” the voice went on. “You will see us best at half-light, at dusk or dawn; next best in darkness; least of all in the sunshine. My companion and I searched farther down the mountain, and found neither woman nor child. But there is a lake of blue water where she must have camped. There is a dead man there, and a witch eaten by a Specter.”
“A dead man? What does he look like?”
“He was in late middle age. Fleshy and smooth-skinned. Silver-gray hair. Dressed in expensive clothes, and with traces of a heavy scent around him.”
“Sir Charles,” said Will. “That’s who it is. Mrs. Coulter must have killed him. Well, that’s something good, at least.”
“She left traces. My companion has followed them, and he will return when he’s found out where she went. I shall stay with you.”
Will got to his feet and looked around. The storm had cleared the air, and the morning was fresh and clean, which only made the scene around him more distressing; for nearby lay the bodies of several of the witches who had escorted him and Lyra toward the meeting with his father. Already a brutal-beaked carrion crow was tearing at the face of one of them, and Will could see a bigger bird circling above, as if choosing the richest feast.
Will looked at each of the bodies in turn, but none of them was Serafina Pekkala, the queen of the witch clan, Lyra’s particular friend. Then he remembered: hadn’t she left suddenly on another errand, not long before the evening?
So she might still be alive. The thought cheered him, and he scanned the horizon for any sign of her, but found nothing but the blue air and the sharp rock in every direction he looked.
“Where are you?” he said to the angel.
“Beside you,” came the voice, “as always.”
Will looked to his left, where the voice was, but saw nothing.
“So no one can see you. Could anyone else hear you as well as me?”
“Not if I whisper,” said the angel tartly.
“What is your name? Do you have names?”
“Yes, we do. My name is Balthamos. My companion is Baruch.”
Will considered what to do. When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed. At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.
“We’ll go back down the mountain,” he said. “We’ll go to that lake. There might be something there I can use. And I’m getting thirsty anyway. I’ll take the way I think it is and you can guide me if I go wrong.”
It was only when he’d been walking for several minutes down the pathless, rocky slope that Will realized his hand wasn’t hurting. In fact, he hadn’t thought of his wound since he woke up.
He stopped and looked at the rough cloth that his father had bound around it after their fight. It was greasy with the ointment he’d spread on it, but there was not a sign of blood; and after the incessant bleeding he’d undergone since the fingers had been lost, this was so welcome that he felt his heart leap almost with joy.
He moved his fingers experimentally. True, the wounds still hurt, but with a different quality of pain: not the deep life-sapping ache of the day before, but a smaller, duller sensation. It felt as if it were healing. His father had done that. The witches’ spell had failed, but his father had healed him.
He moved on down the slope, cheered.
It took three hours, and several words of guidance, before he came to the little blue lake. By the time he reached it, he was parched with thirst, and in the baking sun the cloak was heavy and hot—though when he took it off, he missed its cover, for his bare arms and neck were soon burning. He dropped cloak and rucksack and ran the last few yards to the water, to fall on his face and swallow mouthful after freezing mouthful. It was so cold that it made his teeth and skull ache.
Once he’d slaked the thirst, he sat up and looked around. He’d been in no condition to notice things the day before, but now he saw more clearly the intense color of the water, and heard the strident insect noises from all around.
“Balthamos?”
“Always here.”
“Where is the dead man?”
“Beyond the high rock on your right.”
“Are there any Specters around?”
“No, none. I don’t have anything the Specters want, and nor have you.”
Will took up his rucksack and cloak and made his way along the edge of the lake and up onto the rock Balthamos had pointed out.
Beyond it a little camp had been set up, with five or six tents and the remains of cooking fires. Will moved down warily in case there was someone still alive and hiding.
But the silence was profound, with the insect scrapings only scratching at the surface of it. The tents were still, the water was placid, with the ripples still drifting slowly out from where he’d been drinking. A flicker of green movement near his foot made him start briefly, but it was only a tiny lizard.
The tents were made of camouflage material, which only made them stand out more among the dull red rocks. He looked in the first and found it empty. So was the second, but in the third he found something valuable: a mess tin and a box of matches. There was also a strip of some dark substance as long and as thick as his forearm. At first he thought it was leather, but in the sunlight he saw it clearly to be dried meat.