Chapter 15 15. Casting

when i take the joy of genius Walk merrily in hellfire... —William Blake Meanwhile the Galliferspins were talking of the knife, and after a dubious peace with Iorek Bernison, they scrambled back to the rock out of the way.As the flames blazed up and there was a crackling sound, Thales said, "We can no longer leave him to his left or right, and once his knife is repaired we must come closer than the shadow." "He's too smart, he's on the lookout for us," Salmachia said. "That girl is more believable, and I think we can win her over. She's innocent and emotional, and we can work on her, I think. Think we should, Thales."

"But he has a knife and only he can use that knife." "He ain't going nowhere without her." "But she'll have to follow him, if he's got a knife. I think once the knife's ready they'll use it to sneak into another world so they can escape us, you see how he stopped her when she was about to say something else Is it? They have some secret agenda, nothing like what we want them to do." "We'll see, but I think you're right, Thales. We've got to stick by that boy's side, no matter the cost." They both watched with some suspicion as Iorek Bernison spread out his tools in his improvised workshop. The munitions factory under Lord Asriel's fortress had steel furnaces, rolling mills, wind-powered casting machines and The great workers of the hydraulic press must have laughed at the open fire, the stone hammer, and the anvil made of a piece of Iorek's helmet.Bear, however, reckoned the weight of the task, and in his calculated maneuvers the little spies saw something that dispelled their contempt.

When Will and Lyra came in with the bushes in their arms, Iorek directed them to carefully place the branches on the fire.He looked at each branch, turning it this way and that, and telling Will or Lyra to put it at an angle one way or another, or to break it up into smaller pieces and put it on its own side, and the result was an unusual amount of firepower The fierceness, all the energy concentrated on one side. It was very hot in the cave by this time, and Iorek continued to build the fire, sending the children down the trail a few more times to make sure there was enough fuel to complete the process.

The bear turned over a small stone on the floor and told Lyra to find some of the same stone.He said that when the stones were heated, they gave off a gas that would envelop the blade and keep the air out, because if the hot metal came into contact with the air it would absorb some of the air and weaken it somewhat. Lyra set out to find, and with the help of Pantalaimon, who had turned into an owl, quickly found more than a dozen stones. Iorek showed her how and where to put them, and demonstrated exactly with a branch with leaves on them. Show her what kind of wind she should be fanning to ensure the gas flows evenly through the casting.

Will was in charge of the fire, and Iorek spent a few minutes instructing him to make sure he understood the principles of the job.A lot of things depend on the exact placement, and Iorek can't stop and has to be corrected every time he plays it: Will has to understand, and then he'll get it right. Also, he couldn't expect the knife to look exactly the same when it was repaired, it would be shorter because each part of the blade would overlap the other a little bit so they could be cast together; A little bit of oxidation, so some color will be lost; the handle will no doubt be blackened, but the blade will be just as sharp and will still function.

So Will watched the flames roar down the resinous twigs, his eyes watery and his hands scorched, and he adjusted each fresh twig until the heat concentrated on Iore Gram the desired direction. At the same time, Iorek was grinding and hammering a fist-sized stone by himself, and he eliminated several before choosing the one with the right weight.He hammered it into shape and polished it with a few heavy blows, and the smell of gunpowder from the smashed rock mingled with the smoke, which penetrated the nostrils of the two little spies watching from above.Even Pantalaimon was active, turning into a raven so that he could flap his wings and make the fire burn faster.

The hammer was at last in the shape Iorek was satisfied with, and he placed the first two blades of the delicate knife among the burning logs in the center of the fire, and told Lyra to start blowing stone gas over them, and the bear watched. , his long face ghastly pale in the blinding firelight, and Will watched as the metal surface began to glow red, then yellow, then white. Iorek watched carefully, his claws ready to pinch the blade out, and after a while, the metal changed again, the surface became radiant, and sparks flew everywhere like fireworks. Then Iorek moved, darting in with his right paw, grabbing first one and then the other, securing them between the tips of his giant claws on the spot where the backplate of his helmet had been. on a piece of iron.

Will could smell the scorching claws, but Iorek ignored it. He adjusted the overlapping angle of the blades very quickly, then raised his left claw high and smashed it with the stone hammer. The point of the knife bounced off the rock under the pounding of the hammer, and Will figured the rest of his life depended on what happened to that little triangle, the one looking for a crack inside the atom.All his nerves quivered, feeling every flicker of every flame, feeling every atom loosen in the lattice of metal.Before that, he thought that only a full-scale furnace with the finest tools and equipment could repair that blade, but now he saw that these were the finest tools, and Iorek's skills constituted the best. furnace.

Iorek's snarl overwhelmed the clanging, "Concentrate on holding tight! You have to participate in the casting too! This is your task too!" Will felt his whole body tremble under the blow of the stone hammer in the bear's paw.The second batch of blades was also being heated, Lyra's leafy branches sending hot air across, and the air flow bathed both blades in gas, avoiding the iron-eating air.Will felt everything. He felt that the metal atoms connected together across the gap and formed a new crystal. After the connection was completed, they strengthened and straightened themselves in the invisible lattice.

"Blade!" yelled Iorek. "Straighten the blade!" He meant to focus, and Will did right away, feeling those little snags, and then that slight relief as the blades joined perfectly, and then the interface was connected, and Iorek turned to the other piece. "A new stone," he called to Laila, and she threw the first stone aside and put the second on it to heat. Will checked the fuel and split a twig in half to keep the fire going.Iorek swung the hammer again.Will felt an added layer of complexity to his task, as he had to connect this new blade to the two previous ones exactly, knowing that he could only help Iorek fix it if he did it right. knife.

So the work went on, he didn't know how long it took.As for Lyra, she too found her arms sore, her eyes watering, her skin scorched and red, and every bone in her body aching with fatigue, but she still carried the stones one by one as Iorek had told her to. Putting it on, the tired Pantalaimon still happily raised his wings and flapped the flames. By the time the last piece was reached, Will's head was spinning, the mental effort was exhausting him, he could hardly hold a branch to the fire anymore, he had to attach the blades, or the knife wouldn't close piece. When it comes to the most complicated piece, the last piece, the blade that is about to be completed, the last little piece that is attached to the handle - if he can't keep it together with all the other blades in his full consciousness, Then the knife would fall apart, like when Iorek hadn't mended it at all. The bear felt this too, and when he started to heat the last piece he paused for a moment, and looked at Will, who in his eyes was dazed and expressionless, just a bottomless black glow.But he understands: it's work, it's hard, but they can do it, they can do it. That was enough for Will, and his mind went back to the fire, unleashing his imagination to the top of the cracked hilt, rallying for the toughest final part of the mission. In this way, he, Iorek, and Lila worked together to forge the knife. He didn't know how long the last joint took, but when Iorek hit the final hammer, Will Er felt the last tiny fusion of atoms as they joined together across the gap, and he collapsed to the cave floor, fatigue taking hold of him.Laila on the side also collapsed to the ground, her eyes glazed over with red circles, and her hair was full of soot.Iorek himself stood top-heavy, his fur scorched in places, the thick creamy white streaked with black ash. Thales and Sarmazia took turns sleeping, keeping one always alert, now she was awake and he was sleeping, but as the blade cooled from red to gray and finally to silver, Will reached for the handle , she put a hand on his shoulder to wake him up, and he woke up immediately. But Will didn't touch the knife: he held his palm close by, the heat ring of the knife too big for his hand.The spies were relieved on the rock, only to hear Iorek say to Will, "Come out." Then he said to Laila, "Stay here and don't touch the knife." Lyra sat down close to the cutting board, where the knives lay cooling, and Iorek told her to build up the fire so it wouldn't go out: there was a final touch. Will followed Iorek to the dark hillside outside, and when he came out of the hot cave, he felt chilly and biting. "They shouldn't have made that knife," said Iorek, after walking some distance. "Maybe I shouldn't have repaired it. I'm troubled. I've never been troubled before, I've never wondered, and now I'm full of Doubt. Doubt is a human thing, not a bear thing. If I'm becoming human, then something's wrong, something's wrong, and I'm making it worse." "But wouldn't it be equally wrong when the first bear made the first armor?" Iorek was silent, and they walked until they came to a large pile of snow.Iorek lay and rolled in the snow, flung flakes of snow into the black air, so that he looked as if he were made of snow, and he was all the snow in the world. When he finished rolling and got up and shook himself vigorously, seeing Will still waiting for his answer, he said, "Yes, I think maybe it's not true, but there was no precedent before the first armored bear. Before we knew nothing, that was the beginning of custom. We knew our customs, they were solid, and we followed them invariably. Without customs, bear nature is weak, just as without armor, the bear's body has no same as protection. "But I think it's beyond me to fix this knife. I think I'm as stupid as Eofur Reknisson. Time will tell. But I'm not sure, I wonder, now you have to Tell me: why did the knife break?" Will wiped his aching head with his hands. "The woman looked at me, and I thought she had my mother's face," he said, trying to recall how it felt with all his honesty. "The knife hit something it couldn't cut, and it cracked because my heart was pushing it through and forcing it back at the same time. I think that's what happened, and I'm sure the woman knew what she was doing. She's very smart." "When you talk about that knife, you talk about your mother and father." "Really? Yes...I think so." "What are you going to do with it?" "I have no idea." Suddenly Iorek leaped at Will and gave Will a hard slap with his left paw: the slap was so hard that Will was half dizzy, dizzy and tinnitus, fell into the snow, turned over After several somersaults, it stopped somewhere down the slope. Iorek slowly came to where Will struggled to his feet and said, "Answer my question honestly." Will would love to say, "If I had that knife in my hand, you wouldn't do that," but he knows Iorek knows it, and he knows it, and it would be foolish to say so , but he still wanted to say it. He pursed his lips until he stood up straight, looking directly at Iorek. "I said I didn't know," he said, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible, "because I didn't see what I was going to do, didn't see what it meant, and it frightened me, and it frightened Lyra. Anyway. , I agreed as soon as I heard her say it." "what is that?" "We wanted to go to the world of the dead and talk to the ghost of Roger, Lyla's friend, the boy who was killed in Svalbard. If there was a world of the dead, then my father would be there too . If we could talk to a ghost, I'd like to talk to him. "But I'm conflicted, I'm torn apart because I want to go back to my mother too, because I can, and also because my father and the angel Balthamos told me I should go to Lord Asriel and give him the knife , I think maybe we're right too..." "The angel has escaped," said the bear. "He's not a fighter, he's done his best and he can't do anything more. It's not just him who's scared, I'm scared too, so I have to figure out, maybe sometimes we do wrong things for the wrong things Appearing more dangerous, and we don't want to appear cowardly, so we do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous, we care more about not appearing cowardly than being right, that's very hard, that's why I didn't answer Your reason." "I see," said Bear. They stood still for what seemed like a long time, especially for Will, who was barely immune to the cold, but Iorek wasn't done yet.Will was still weak and dazed after that slap and felt like he couldn't stand on his feet, so they stayed where they were. "Well, I have compromised in many respects," said the Bear King. "Maybe by helping you, I brought the final destruction to my kingdom; maybe I didn't, the destruction was coming; maybe I prevented It's coming. So I'm distressed and have to do things against bear nature, guessing and doubting like a human. "I'm going to tell you something that you already know, but you don't want to know, and that's why I'm telling you openly so you don't get it wrong. If you want to succeed in this mission , you have to stop thinking about your mother, you have to put her aside. If you get distracted, the knife will break. "Now I'm going to say goodbye to Lyra. You must wait in the cave. Those two spies won't let you out of their sight. I don't want them to hear me talking to her." Will had nothing to say, and despite the congestion in his chest and throat, he managed to say, "Thank you, Iorek Bernison." But that was all he could say. He and Iorek climbed the slope to the cave.In the boundless darkness around, the fire in the cave still shone warmly. There, Iorek put the finishing touches on the delicate knife, laying it in brighter ash until the blade glowed, and Will and Lyra watched a hundred colors shift within the smoky metal , when he felt the time was right, Iorek told Will to pick it up and plunge it straight into the dancing snow outside. The rosewood knife had charred the roast black, but Will, wrapped in layers of shirt, did as Iorek said.In the flicker of hissing steam he felt the atoms fuse together at last, and he knew the knife was as sharp as ever, and the point was as sharp as ever. However, it does look different.It's shorter, far less pretty, with a dull silver streak on every single port, and now it's ugly and looks like it's been bruised. When the knife was more or less cool, he packed it into the rucksack, ignored the spies, and sat there waiting for Lyra to return. Iorek took her a little way up the slope, out of sight in the cave, and seated her comfortably within the barrier of his great arms, with the rat-formed Pantalaimon lying on her chest. forward.Iorek bent his nose to caress her smoky hands, and without a word he began to lick them clean, his tongue soothing her burns, and she felt so safe for the first time in her life. But when her hands were clear of soot and dust, Iorek spoke, and she felt his voice vibrate on her back. "Lila? What's the deal with this plan to visit the dead?" "It came from my dream, Iorek. I saw Roger's ghost, and I knew he was calling... You remember Roger's. Well, he was killed since we left you, and it was my fault, At least that's how I feel, and I think I'm supposed to keep going, that's all: I'm supposed to say I'm sorry. I'm supposed to get him out of there if I can. If Will can open a way to the world of the dead, Then we have to do it." "Can and must are not the same thing." "But if you must and can, then you have no excuses." "When you're alive, your business is to deal only with living things." "No, Iorek," she said gently, "our business is to keep our promises, no matter how difficult. You know, secretly, I'm scared to death, I wish I'd never had that dream, I wish Will hadn't thought about going there with that knife, but we have this plan, so we can't get away. " Lyra felt Pantalaimon tremble and stroked her aching hand. "We don't know how to get there, though," she went on. "We won't know anything until we try. What are you going to do?" "I'm planning to go back north with my people, we can't live in the mountains, even the snow is different. I thought we could live here, but we live more comfortably in the sea, even though it's hot. That's It's worth learning to adapt to. Also, I think someone needs us. I can feel the war, Lyra? I can smell it. I can hear it. I talked to Seraphim before I came here. Na Pekkala, and she told me she was going to Lord Faa and the gypsies, and if there was a war, we would be needed." Hearing the names of old friends, Lila sat up excitedly, but before Iorek finished speaking, he continued: "If you can't find your way out of the world of the dead, then we'll never see each other again. 'Cause I don't have a ghost, my body will stay on Earth and become a part of it, but if you and I both survive, then you'll always be a guest of Svalbard, and so will Will,' he told Ever seen what happened when you and we met?" "No," said Lyra, "he just said it was by a river." "He despised me, and I thought no one else could do that, but this half-grown boy was too bold and too clever for me. I'm not happy with that plan you're going to carry out, but you're not going to talk to anyone but that boy. I'm not sure if anyone goes, you're a good match. Come on, Lyra? Eloquent, my dear friend." She stood up, hugged his neck, buried her face in his hair, unable to speak. After a while, he stood up gently, let go of her arm, then turned and walked quietly into the darkness.Lyra thought he disappeared almost immediately on the snow-covered ground, but perhaps it was because her eyes were full of tears. When Will heard footsteps down the path, he looked at the spies and said, "Stay still. Look - here's the knife - I won't use it, stay here." He went outside to find Lyra standing motionless weeping, Pantalaimon turned into a wolf, looking up at the dark sky.She said nothing, the only light coming from the dim light of the embers bouncing off the snowdrifts, which in turn reflected off her wet cheeks, her tears reflected in Will's eyes, just like the two Photon weaves the two into a web of silence. "I love him so much, Will!" she managed to whisper tremulously, "He's looking so old! He looks hungry and old and sad...is it all up to us now, Will?Now we have no one to rely on...only ourselves.But we're not mature enough, we're only young...we're too young...if poor Mr. Scoresby is dead and Iorek is old...it's up to us to do everything. " "We can do it," he said. "I'm never looking back. We can do it, but we've got to sleep now, if we stay in this world, those rotors the spies call The jets might come... I'm going to cut right now, we're going to find another world to sleep in, it's too bad if the spies come with us, we'll have to get rid of them next time." "Yes," she said, sniffing the back of her hand, then wiping her nose, then wiping her eyes with both hands, "let's do that, are you sure a knife will do? Have you tried it? " "I know it will work." Pantalaimon turned into a tiger shape, which they hoped would stop the spies, and Will and Lyla walked back to pick up their rucksacks. "What are you doing?" said Salmachia. "Into another world," Will said, pulling out the knife, feeling whole again, he hadn't realized how much he loved it before. "But you'll have to wait for Lord Asriel's rotorcraft to arrive," said Thales, his voice stiff. "We're not going," Will said, "I'll kill you if you come near the knife. Come with us if you come, but you can't make us stay here, we're going. " "you are lying!" "No," Lyra said, "I lied, Will didn't, you didn't think of that before." "But where are you going?" Will didn't answer, he felt ahead in the hazy air, cutting a hole. "It's a mistake, you should be aware of it, listen to us, you didn't think about—" Sarmaqiya said. "No, we have thought about it," said Will, "we have thought about it carefully, and we will tell you what we think tomorrow, and you can go with us, or you can go back to Lord Asriel." The windows opened to the world to which he had fled with Baruch and Balthamus, where he had slept peacefully: warm, endless beaches with fern forests behind the dunes. "Right here—we'll sleep here—that's all right." He let them through, closing the window at once.While he and Laila lay exhausted on the spot, Madame Salmachia stood guard, and the knight switched on the lodestone resonator and began sending a message into the darkness.