At the western end of a range of saw-toothed mountains, on a peak that commanded wide views of the plain below and the valleys behind, a fortress of basalt seemed to grow out of the mountain as if some volcano had thrust it up a million years ago.
In vast caverns beneath the rearing walls, provisions of every sort were stored and labeled; in the arsenals and magazines, engines of war were being calibrated, armed, and tested; in the mills below the mountain, volcanic fires fed mighty forges where phosphor and titanium were being melted and combined in alloys never known or used before.
On the most exposed side of the fortress, at a point deep in the shadow of a buttress where the mighty walls rose sheer out of the ancient lava-flows, there was a small gate, a postern where a sentry watched day and night and challenged all who sought to enter.
While the watch was being changed on the ramparts above, the sentry stamped once or twice and slapped his gloved hands on his upper arms for warmth, for it was the coldest hour of the night, and the little naphtha flare in the bracket beside him gave no heat. His relief would come in another ten minutes, and he was looking forward to the mug of chocolatl, the smokeleaf, and most of all his bed.
To hear a hammering at the little door was the last thing he expected.
However, he was alert, and he snapped open the spy hole, at the same time opening the tap that allowed a flow of naphtha past the pilot light in the buttress outside. In the glare it threw, he saw three hooded figures carrying between them a fourth whose shape was indistinct, and who seemed ill, or wounded.
The figure in front threw back his hood. He had a face the sentry knew, but he gave the password anyway and said, “We found him at the sulphur lake. Says his name is Baruch. He’s got an urgent message for Lord Asriel.”
The sentry unbarred the door, and his terrier dæmon quivered as the three figures maneuvered their burden with difficulty through the narrow entrance. Then the dæmon gave a soft involuntary howl, quickly cut off, as the sentry saw that the figure being carried was an angel, wounded: an angel of low rank and little power, but an angel, nevertheless.
“Lay him in the guardroom,” the sentry told them, and as they did so, he turned the crank of the telephone bell and reported what was happening to the officer of the watch.
On the highest rampart of the fortress was a tower of adamant: just one flight of steps up to a set of rooms whose windows looked out north, south, east, and west. The largest room was furnished with a table and chairs and a map chest, another with a camp bed. A small bathroom completed the set.
Lord Asriel sat in the adamant tower facing his spy captain across a mass of scattered papers. A naphtha lamp hung over the table, and a brazier held burning coals against the bitter chill of the night. Inside the door, a small blue hawk was perching on a bracket.
The spy captain was called Lord Roke. He was striking to look at: he was no taller than Lord Asriel’s hand span, and as slender as a dragonfly, but the rest of Lord Asriel’s captains treated him with profound respect, for he was armed with a poisonous sting in the spurs on his heels.
It was his custom to sit on the table, and his manner to repel anything but the greatest courtesy with a haughty and malevolent tongue. He and his kind, the Gallivespians, had few of the qualities of good spies except, of course, their exceptional smallness: they were so proud and touchy that they would never have remained inconspicuous if they had been of Lord Asriel’s size.
“Yes,” he said, his voice clear and sharp, his eyes glittering like droplets of ink, “your child, my Lord Asriel: I know about her. Evidently I know more than you do.”
Lord Asriel looked at him directly, and the little man knew at once that he’d taken advantage of his commander’s courtesy: the force of Lord Asriel’s glance flicked him like a finger, so that he lost his balance and had to put out a hand to steady himself on Lord Asriel’s wineglass. A moment later Lord Asriel’s expression was bland and virtuous, just as his daughter’s could be, and from then on Lord Roke was more careful.
“No doubt, Lord Roke,” said Lord Asriel. “But for reasons I don’t understand, the girl is the focus of the Church’s attention, and I need to know why. What are they saying about her?”
“The Magisterium is alive with speculation; one branch says one thing, another is investigating something else, and each of them is trying to keep its discoveries secret from the rest. The most active branches are the Consistorial Court of Discipline and the Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit, and,” said Lord Roke, “I have spies in both of them.”
“Have you turned a member of the Society, then?” said Lord Asriel. “I congratulate you. They used to be impregnable.”
“My spy in the Society is the Lady Salmakia,” said Lord Roke, “a very skillful agent. There is a priest whose dæmon, a mouse, she approached in their sleep. My agent suggested that the man perform a forbidden ritual designed to invoke the presence of Wisdom. At the critical moment, the Lady Salmakia appeared in front of him. The priest now thinks he can communicate with Wisdom whenever he pleases, and that she has the form of a Gallivespian and lives in his bookcase.”
Lord Asriel smiled and said, “And what has she learned?”
“The Society thinks that your daughter is the most important child who has ever lived. They think that a great crisis will come before very long, and that the fate of everything will depend on how she behaves at that point. As for the Consistorial Court of Discipline, it’s holding an inquiry at the moment, with witnesses from Bolvangar and elsewhere. My spy in the Court, the Chevalier Tialys, is in touch with me every day by means of the lodestone resonator, and he is letting me know what they discover. In short, I would say that the Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit will find out very soon where the child is, but they will do nothing about it. It will take the Consistorial Court a little longer, but when they do, they will act decisively, and at once.”