This bridge had clearly felt the strain of the sledge's weight, for a crack ran across it close to the other edge of the chasm, and the surface on the near side of the crack had settled down a foot or so. It might support the weight of a child: it would certainly not stand under the weight of an armored bear.
And Lord Asriel's tracks ran on beyond the bridge and further up the mountain. If she went on, it would have to be by herself.
Lyra turned to lorek Byrnison.
“I got to go across,” she said. “Thank you for all you done. I don't know what's going to happen when I get to him. We might all die, whether I get to him or not. But if I come back, I'll come and see you to thank you properly, King lorek Byrnison.”
She laid a hand on his head. He let it lie there and nodded gently.
“Goodbye, Lyra Silvertongue,” he said.
Her heart thumping painfully with love, she turned away and set her foot on the bridge. The snow creaked under her, and Pantalaimon flew up and over the bridge, to settle in the snow on the far side and encourage her onward. Step after step she took, and wondered with every step whether it would be better to run swiftly and leap for the other side, or go slowly as she was doing and tread as lightly as possible. Halfway across there came another loud creak from the snow; a piece fell off near her feet and tumbled into the abyss, and the bridge settled down another few inches against the crack.
She stood perfectly still. Pantalaimon was crouched, leopard-formed, ready to leap down and reach for her.
The bridge held. She took another step, then another, and then she felt something settling down below her feet and leaped for the far side with all her strength. She landed belly-down in the snow as the entire length of the bridge fell into the crevasse with a soft whoosh behind her.
Pantalaimon's claws were in her furs, holding tight.
After a minute she opened her eyes and crawled up away from the edge. There was no way back. She stood and raised her hand to the watching bear. lorek Byrnison stood on his hind legs to acknowledge her, and then turned and made off down the mountain in a swift run to help his subjects in the battle with Mrs. Coulter and the soldiers from the zeppelin.
Lyra was alone.
Twenty-Three
The Bridge To The Stars
Once lorek Byrnison was out of sight, Lyra felt a great weakness coming over her, and she turned blindly and felt for Pantalaimon, “Oh, Pan, dear, I can't go on! I'm so frightened—and so tired—all this way, and I'm scared to death! I wish it was someone else instead of me, I do honestly!”
Her daemon nuzzled at her neck in his cat form, warm and comforting.
“I just don't know what we got to do,” Lyra sobbed. “It's too much for us, Pan, we can't…”
She clung to him blindly, rocking back and forth and letting the sobs cry out wildly over the bare snow.
“And even if—if Mrs. Coulter got to Roger first, there'd be no saving him, because she'd take him back to Bolvangar, or worse, and they'd 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 was profoundly dark, though the billions of stars lay on it like diamonds on velvet. They were outshone, though, by the Aurora, outshone a hundred times. Never had Lyra seen it so brilliant and dramatic; with every twitch and shiver, new miracles of light danced across the sky. And behind the ever-changing 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, compacted here and there into ridges where two sheets of ice had pressed together, but otherwise flat and white and endless, reaching to the Pole itself and far beyond, featureless, lifeless, colorless, and bleak beyond Lyra's imagination. To the east and west 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 come, 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.
“They're just beyond the peak!” he said. “Lord Asriel's laid out all his instruments, and Roger can't get away—”
And as he said that, the Aurora nickered and dimmed, like an anbaric bulb at the end of its life, and then went out altogether. In the gloom, though, Lyra sensed the presence of the Dust, for the air seemed to be full of dark intentions, like the forms of thoughts not yet born.
In the enfolding dark she heard a cry:
“Lyra! Lyra!”
“I'm coming!” 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!”
“I'm nearly there,” she gasped. “Nearly there, Roger!”
Pantalaimon was changing rapidly, in his agitation: lion, ermine, eagle, wildcat, hare, salamander, owl, leopard, every form he'd ever taken, a kaleidoscope of forms among the Dust—