So she curled up in a quiet corner of the combat ground with Pantalaimon as a wolverine to keep her warm, and piled snow over herself as a bear would do, and went to sleep.
Something nudged her foot, and a strange bear voice said, “Lyra Silvertongue, the king wants you.”
She woke up nearly dead with cold, and couldn't open her eyes, for they had frozen shut; but Pantalaimon licked them to melt the ice on her eyelashes, and soon she was able to see the young bear speaking to her in the moonlight.
She tried to stand, but fell over twice.
The bear said, “Ride on me,” and crouched to offer his broad back, and half-clinging, half-falling, she managed to stay on while he took her to a steep hollow, where many bears were assembled.
And among them was a small figure who ran toward her, and whose daemon leaped up to greet Pantalaimon.
“Roger!” she said.
“lorek Byrnison made me stay out there in the snow while he came to fetch you away—we fell out the balloon, Lyra! After you fell out, we got carried miles and miles, and then Mr. Scoresby let some more gas out and we crashed into a mountain, and we fell down such a slope like you never seen! And I don't know where Mr. Scoresby is now, nor the witches. There was just me and lorek Byrnison. He come straight back this way to look for you. And they told me about his fight….”
Lyra looked around. Under the direction of an older bear, the human prisoners were building a shelter out of driftwood and scraps of canvas. They seemed pleased to have some work to do. One of them was striking a flint to light a fire.
“There is food,” said the young bear who had woken Lyra.
A fresh seal lay on the snow. The bear sliced it open with a claw and showed Lyra where to find the kidneys. She ate one raw: it was warm and soft and delicious beyond imagining.
“Eat the blubber too,” said the bear, and tore off a piece for her. It tasted of cream flavored with hazelnuts. Roger hesitated, but followed her example. They ate greedily, and within a very few minutes Lyra was fully awake and beginning to be warm.
Wiping her mouth, she looked around, but lorek was not in sight.
“lorek Byrnison is speaking with his counselors,” said the young bear. “He wants to see you when you have eaten. Follow me.”
He led them over a rise in the snow to a spot where bears were beginning to build a wall of ice blocks. lorek sat at the center of a group of older bears, and he rose to greet her.
“Lyra Silvertongue,” he said. “Come and hear what I am being told.”
He didn't explain her presence to the other bears, or perhaps they had learned about her already; but they made room for her and treated her with immense courtesy, as if she were a queen. She felt proud beyond measure to sit beside her friend lorek Byrnison under the Aurora as it flickered gracefully in the polar sky, and join the conversation of the bears.
It turned out that lofur Raknison's dominance over them had been like a spell. Some of them put it down to the influence of Mrs. Coulter, who had visited him before lorek's exile, though lorek had not known about it, and given lofur various presents.
“She gave him a drug,” said one bear, “which he fed secretly to Hjalmur Hjalmurson, and made him forget himself.”
Hjalmur Hjalmurson, Lyra gathered, was the bear whom lorek had killed, and whose death had brought about his exile. So Mrs. Coulter was behind that! And there was more.
“There are human laws that prevent certain things that she was planning to do, but human laws don't apply on Svalbard. She wanted to set up another station here like Bolvangar, only worse, and lofur was going to allow her to do it, against all the custom of the bears; because humans have visited, or been imprisoned, but never lived and worked here. Little by little she was going to increase her power over lofur Raknison, and his over us, until we were her creatures running back and forth at her bidding, and our only duty to guard the abomination she was going to create….”
That was an old bear speaking. His name was S0ren Eisarson, and he was a counselor, one who had suffered under lofur Raknison.
“What is she doing now, Lyra?” said lorek Byrnison. “Once she hears of lofur's death, what will her plans be?”
Lyra took out the alethiometer. There was not much light to see it by, and lorek commanded that a torch be brought.
“What happened to Mr. Scoresby?” Lyra said while they were waiting. “And the witches?”
“The witches were attacked by another witch clan. I don't know if the others were allied to the child cutters, but they were patrolling our skies in vast numbers, and they attacked in the storm. I didn't see what happened to Serafina Pekkala. As for Lee Scoresby, the balloon soared up again after I fell out with the boy, taking him with it. But your symbol reader will tell you what their fate is.”
A bear pulled up a sledge on which a cauldron of charcoal was smoldering, and thrust a resinous branch into the heart of it. The branch caught at once, and in its glare Lyra turned the hands of the alethiometer and asked about Lee Scoresby.
It turned out that he was still aloft, borne by the winds toward Nova Zembla, and that he had been unharmed by the cliff-ghasts and had fought off the other witch clan.
Lyra told lorek, and he nodded, satisfied.
“If he is in the air, he will be safe,” he said. “What of Mrs. Coulter?”
The answer was complicated, with the needle swinging from symbol to symbol in a sequence that made Lyra puzzle for a long time. The bears were curious, but restrained by their respect for lorek Byrnison, and his for Lyra, and she put them out of her mind and sank again into the alethiometric trance.