Chapter 15 CHAPTER EIGHT: THE TOWER OF THE ANGELS-1

Will said, "Who is this man who got the knife?" They were in the Rolls-Royce, driving up through Oxford. Sir Charles sat in the front, half-turned around, and Will and Lyra sat in the back, with Pantalaimon a mouse now, soothed in Lyras hands. "Someone who has no more right to the knife than I have to the alethiometer," said Sir Charles. "Unfortunately for all of us, the alethiometer is in my possession, and the knife is in his." "How do you know about that other world anyway?" "I know many things that you dont. What else would you expect? I am a good deal older and considerably better informed. There are a number of doorways between this world and that; those who know where they are can easily pass back and forth .In Cittagazze theres a Guild of learned men, so called, who used to do so all the time."

"You ent from this world at all!" said Lyra suddenly. "Youre from there, ent you?" And again came that strange nudge at her memory. She was almost certain shed seen him before. "No, Im not," he said. Will said, "If we've got to get the knife from that man, we need to know more about him. He's not going to just give it to us, is he?" "Certainly not. Its the one thing keeping the Specters away. Its not going to be easy by any means." "The Specters are afraid of the knife?" "Very much so." "Why do they attack only grownups?"

"You don't need to know that now. It doesn't matter. Lyra," Sir Charles said, turning to her, "tell me about your remarkable friend." He meant Pantalaimon. And as soon as he said it, Will realized that the snake hed seen concealed in the mans sleeve was a daemon too, and that Sir Charles must come from Lyras world. He was asking about Pantalaimon to put them off the track : so he didnt realize that Will had seen his own daemon. Lyra lifted Pantalaimon close to her breast, and he became a black rat, whipping his tail around and around her wrist and glaring at Sir Charles with red eyes.

"You werent supposed to see him," she said. "Hes my daemon. You think you ent got daemons in this world, but you have. Yoursd be a dung beetle." "If the Pharaohs of Egypt were content to be represented by a scarab, so am I," he said. "Well, youre from yet another world. How interesting. Is that where the alethiometer comes from, or did you steal it on your travels?" "I was given it," said Lyra furiously. "The Master of Jordan College in my Oxford gave it to me. Its mine by right. And you wouldn't know what to do with it, you stupid, stinky old man; youd never read it in a hundred years. Its just a toy to you. But I need it, and so does Will. Well get it back, dont worry."

"Well see," said Sir Charles. "This is where I dropped you before. Shall we let you out here?" "No," said Will, because he could see a police car farther down the road. "You cant come into Cigazze because of the Specters, so it doesnt matter if you know where the window is. Take us farther up toward the ring road " "As you wish," said Sir Charles, and the car moved on. "When, or if, you get the knife, call my number and Allan will come to pick you up." They said no more till the chauffeur drew the car to a halt. As they got out, Sir Charles lowered his window and said to Will, "By the way, if you cant get the knife, dont bother to return. Come to my house without it and Ill call the police. I imagine theyll be there at once when I tell them your real name. It is William Parry, isn't it? Yes, I thought so.

Theres a very good photo of you in todays paper." And the car pulled away. Will was speechless. Lyra was shaking his arm. "Its all right," she said, "he wont tell anyone else. He would have done it already if he was going to. Come on." Ten minutes later they stood in the little square at the foot of the Tower of the Angels. Will had told her about the snake daemon, and she had stopped still in the street, tormented again by that half-memory. Where had she seen him? It was no good; the memory wouldn't come clear. "I didnt want to tell him" Lyra said quietly, "but I saw a man up there last night. He looked down when the kids were making all that noise...."

"What did he look like?" "Young, with curly hair. Not old at all. But I saw him for only a moment, at the very top, over those battlements. I thought he might be... You remember Angelica and Paolo, and Paolo said they had an older brother, and hed come into the city as well, and she made Paolo stop telling us, as if it was a secret? Well, I thought it might be him. He might be after this knife as well. kids know about it. I think thats the real reason why they come back in the first place." "Mmm," he said, looking up. "Maybe." She remembered the children talking earlier that morning. No children would go in the tower, theyd said; there were scary things in there. And she remembered her own feeling of unease as she and Pantalaimon had looked through the open door before leaving the city. Maybe that was why they needed a grown man to go in there. Her daemon was fluttering around her head now, moth-formed in the bright sunlight, whispering anxiously.

"Hush," she whispered back, "there ent any choice, Pan. Its our fault. We got to make it right, and this is the only way." Will walked off to the right, following the wall of the tower. At the corner a narrow cobbled alley led between it and the next building, and Will went down there too, looking up, getting the measure of the place. Lyra followed. Will stopped under a window at the secondstory level and said to Panta-laimon, "Can you fly up there? Can you look in?" He became a sparrow at once and set off. He could only just reach it. Lyra gasped and gave a little cry when he was at the windowsill, and he perched there for a second or two before diving down again. She sighed and took deep Breaths like someone rescued from drowning. Will frowned, puzzled.

"It's hard," she explained, "when your daemon goes away from you. It hurts." "Sorry. Did you see anything?" he said. "Stairs," said Pantalaimon. "Stairs and dark rooms. There were swords hung on the wall, and spears and shields, like a museum. And I saw the young man. He was...dancing." "Dancing?" "Moving to and fro, waving his hand about. Or as if he was fighting something invisible... I just saw him through an open door. Not clearly." "Fighting a Specter?" Lyra guessed. But they couldn't guess any better, so they moved on. Behind the tower a high stone wall, topped with broken glass, enclosed a small garden with formal beds of herbs around a fountain (once again Pantalaimon flew up to look); and then there was an alley on the other side, bringing them back to the square. The windows around the tower were small and deeply set, like frowning eyes.

"Well have to go in the front, then," said Will. He climbed the steps and pushed the door wide. Sunlight struck in, and the heavy hinges creaked. He took a step or two inside, and seeing no one, went in farther. Lyra followed close behind. The floor was made of flagstones worn smooth over centuries, and the air inside was cool. Will looked at a flight of steps going downward, and went far enough down to see that it opened into a wide, low-ceilinged room with an enormous coal furnace at one end, where the plaster walls were black with soot; one there, and he went up to the entrance hall again, where he found Lyra with her finger to her lips, looking up.

"I can hear him," she whispered. "Hes talking to himself, I reckon." Will listened hard, and heard it too: a low crooning murmur interrupted occasionally by a harsh laugh or a short cry of anger. It sounded like the voice of a madman. Will blew out his cheeks and set off to climb the staircase. It was made of blackened oak, enormous and broad, with steps as worn as the flagstones: far too solid to creak underfoot. The light diminished as they climbed, because the only illumination was the small deep-set window on each landing. They climbed up one floor, stopped and listened, climbed the next, and the sound of the mans voice was now mixed with that of halting, rhythmic footsteps. It came from a room across the landing, whose door stood ajar. Will tiptoed to it and pushed it open another few inches so he could see. It was a large room with cobwebs thickly clustered on the ceiling. The walls were lined with bookshelves containing badly preserved volumes with the bindings crumbling and flaking, or distorted with damp. wide dusty tables, and others had been thrust back higgledy-piggledy. In the center of the room, a young man was—dancing. Pantalaimon was right: it looked exactly like that. He had his back to the door, and hed shuffle to one side, then to the other, and all the time his right hand moved in front of him as if he were clearing a way through some invisible obstacles. In that hand was a knife, not a special-looking knife, just a dull blade about eight inches long, and hed thrust it forward, slice it sideways , feel forward with it, jab up and down, all in the empty air. He moved as if to turn, and Will withdraw. He put a finger to his lips and beckoned to Lyra, and led her to the stairs and up to the next floor. "What's he doing?" she whispered. He described it as well as he could. "He sounds mad," said Lyra. "Is he thin, with curly hair?" "Yes. Red hair, like Angelicas. He certainly looks mad. I dont know—I think this is odder than Sir Charles said. Lets look farther up before we speak to him." She didnt question, but let him lead them up another staircase to the top story. It was much lighter up there, because a white-painted flight of steps led up to the roof—or, rather, to a wood and- glass structure like a little greenhouse. Even at the foot of the steps they could feel the heat it was absorbing. And as they stood there they heard a groan from above. They jumped. Theyd been sure there was only one man in the tower. Pantalaimon was so startled that he changed at once from a cat to a bird and flew to Lyras breast. Will and Lyra realized as he did so that theyd seized each others hand , and let go slowly. "Better go and see," Will whispered. "Ill go first." "I ought to go first," she whispered back, "seeing its my fault." "Seeing its your fault, you got to do as I say." She twisted her lip but fell in behind him. He climbed up into the sun. The light in the glass structure was blinding. It was as hot as a greenhouse, too, and Will could neither see nor breathe easily. He found a door handle and turned it and stepped out quickly, holding his hand up to keep the sun out of his eyes. He found himself on a roof of lead, enclosed by the battle-mented parapet. The glass structure was set in the center, and the lead sloped slightly downward all around toward a gutter inside the parapet, with square drainage holes in the stone for rainwater . Lying on the lead, in the full sun, was an old man with white hair. His face was bruised and battered, and one eye was closed, and as they saw when they got closer, his hands were tied behind him. He heard them coining and groaned again, and tried to turn over to shield himself. "Its all right," said Will quietly. "We arent going to hurt you. Did the man with the knife do this?" "Mmm," the old man grunted. "Lets undo the rope. He hasn't tied it very well...." It was clumsily and hastily knotted, and it fell away quickly once Will had seen how to work it. old man to get up and took him over to the shade of the parapet "Who are you?" Will said. "We didnt think there were two people here. We thought there was only one." "Giacomo Paradisi," the old man muttered through broken teeth. "I am the bearer. No one else. That young man stole it from me. There are always fools who take risks like that for the sake of the knife. But this one is desperate. He is going to kill me." "No, he ent," Lyra said. "Whats the bearer? Whats that mean?" "I hold the subtle knife on behalf of the Guild. Where has he gone?" "Hes downstairs," said Will. "We came up past him. He didnt see us. He was waving it about in the air." Trying to cut through. He wont succeed. When he—" "Watch out," Lyra said. Will turned. The young man was climbing up into the little wooden shelter. He hadnt seen them yet, but there was nowhere to hide, and as they stood up he saw the movement and whipped around to face them. Immediately Pantalaimon became a bear and reared up on his hind legs. Only Lyra knew that he wouldn't be able to touch the other man, and certainly the other blinked and stared for a second, but Will saw that he hadnt really registered it. The man was crazy. His curly red hair was matted, his chin was flecked with spit, and the whites of his eyes showed all around the pupils. And he had the knife, and they had no weapons at all. Will stepped up the lead, away from the old man, crouching, ready to jump or fight or leap out of the way. The young man sprang forward and slashed at him with the knife—left, right, left, coming closer and closer, making Will back away till he was trapped in the angle where two sides of the tower met. Lyra was scrambling toward the man from behind, with the loose rope in her hand. Will darted forward suddenly, just as hed done to the man in his house, and with the same effect: his antagonist tumbled backward unexpectedly, falling over Lyra to crash onto the lead. It was all happening too quickly for Will to be frightened. But he did have time to see the knife fly from the mans hand and sink at once into the lead some feet away, point first, with no more resistance than if it had fallen into butter. it plunged as far as the hilt and stopped suddenly. And the young man twisted over and reached for it at once, but Will flung himself on his back and seized his hair. He had learned to fight at school; there had been plenty of occasion for it, once the other children had sensed that there was something the matter with his mother. And hed learned that the object of a school fight was not to gain points for style but to force your enemy to give in, which meant hurting him more than he was hurting you. He knew that you had to be willing to hurt someone else, too, and hed found out that not many people were, when it came to it; but he knew that he was. So this wasn't unfamiliar to him, but he hadnt fought against a nearly grown man armed with a knife before, and at all costs he must keep the man from picking it up now that hed dropped it. Will twisted his fingers into the young mans thick, damp hair and wrenched back as hard as he could. The man grunted and flung himself sideways, but Will hung on even tighter, and his opponent roared with pain and anger. He pushed up and then threw himself backward, crushing Will between himself and the parapet, and that was too much; all the breath left Wills body, and in the shock his hands loosened. The man pulled free. Will dropped to his knees in the gutter, winded badly, but he couldn't stay there. He tried to stand —and in doing so, he thrust his foot through one of the drainage holes. His fingers scraped desperately on the warm lead, and for a horrible second he thought he would slide off the roof to the ground. But nothing happened. His left leg was thrust out into empty space; He pulled his leg back inside the parapet and scrambled to his feet. The man had reached his knife again, but he didnt have time to pull it out of the lead before Lyra leaped onto his back, scratching, kicking, biting like a wildcat. But she missed the hold on his hair that she was trying for, and he threw her off. And when he got up, he had the knife in his hand. Lyra had fallen to one side, with Pantalaimon a wildcat now, fur raised, teeth bared, beside her. Will faced the man directly and saw him clearly for the first time. There was no doubt: he was Angelicas brother, all right, and he was vicious. All his mind was focused on Will, and the knife was in his hand. But Will wasn't harmless either. Hed seized the rope when Lyra dropped it, and now he wrapped it around his left hand for protection against the knife. He moved sideways between the young man and the sun, so that his antagonist had to squint and blink. Even better, the glass structure threw brilliant reflections into his eyes, and Will could see that for a moment he was almost blinded. He leaped to the mans left, away from the knife, holding his left hand high, and kicked hard at the mans knee. Hed took care to aim, and his foot connected well. The man went down with a loud grunt and twisted away awkwardly . Will leaped after him, kicking again and again, kicking whatever parts he could reach, driving the man back and back toward the glass house. If he could get him to the top of the stairs... This time the man fell more heavily, and his right hand with the knife in it came down on the lead at Wills feet. Will stamped on it at once, hard, crushing the mans fingers between the hilt and the lead, and then wrapped the rope more tightly around his hand and stamped a second time. The man yelled and let go of the knife. At once Will kicked it away, his shoe connecting with the hilt, luckily for him, and it spun across the lead and came to rest in the gutter just beside a drainage hole. The rope had come loose around his hand once more, and there seemed to be a surprising amount of blood from somewhere sprinkled on the lead and on his own shoes. The man was pulling himself up— "Look out!" shouted Lyra, but Will was ready. At the moment when the man was off balance, he threw himself at him, crashing as hard as he could into the mans midriff. The man fell backward into the glass, which shattered at once, and the flimsy wooden frame went too. Among the wreckage half over the stairwell, and grabbed the doorframe, but it had nothing to support it anymore, and it gave way. He fell downward, and more glass fell all around him. And Will darted back to the gutter, and picked up the knife, and the fight was over. The young man, cut and battered, clambered up the step, and saw Will standing above him holding the knife; then turned and fled. "Ah," said Will, sitting down. "Ah." Something was badly wrong, and he hadnt noticed it. He dropped the knife and hugged his left hand to himself. The tangle of rope was sodden with blood, and when he pulled it away— "Your fingers!" Lyra breathed. Will—" His little finger and the finger next to it fell away with the rope. His head swam. Blood was pulsing strongly from the stumps where his fingers had been, and his jeans and shoes were sodden already. He had to lie back and close his eyes for a moment. The pain wasn't that great, and a part of his mind registered that with a dull surprise. It was like a persistent, deep hammer thud more than the bright, sharp clarity when you cut yourself superficially. Hed never felt so weak. He supposed he had gone to sleep for a moment. Lyra was doing something to his arm. He sat up to look at the damage, and felt sick. The old man was somewhere close by, but Will couldn't see what he was doing, and meanwhile Lyra was talking to him. "If only we had some bloodmoss," she was saying, "what the bears use, I could make it better, Will, I could. Look, Im going to tie this bit of rope around your arm, to stop the bleeding, cause I cant tie it around where your fingers were, theres nothing to tie it to. Hold still." He let her do it, then looked around for his fingers. There they were, curled like a bloody quotation mark on the lead. He laughed. "Hey," she said, "stop that. Get up now. Mr. Paradisis got some medicine, some salve, I dunno what it is. You got to come downstairs. That other mans gone—we seen him run out the door. Hes gone now. You beat him. Come on, Will— come on—"