THE AMBER SPYGLASS CONTENTS Title Page Epigraph ONE The Enchanted Sleeper TWO Balthamos and Baruch THREE Scavengers FOUR Ama and the Bats FIVE The Adamant Tower SIX Preemptive Absolution SEVEN Mary, Alone EIGHT Vodka NINE Upriver TEN Wheels ELEVEN The Dragonflies TWELVE The Break THIRTEEN Tialys and Salmakia FOURTEEN Know What It Is FIFTEEN The Forge SIXTEEN The Intention Craft SEVENTEEN Oil and Lacquer EIGHTEEN The Suburbs of the Dead NINETEEN Lyra and Her Death TWENTY Climbing TWENTY-ONE The Harpies TWENTY-TWO The Whisperers TWENTY-THREE No Way Out TWENTY-FOUR Mrs. Coulter in Geneva TWENTY-FIVE Saint-Jean-les-Eaux TWENTY-SIX The Abyss TWENTY-SEVEN The Platform TWENTY-EIGHT Midnight TWENTY-NINE The Battle on the Plain THIRTY The Clouded Mountain THIRTY-ONE Authority’s End THIRTY-TWO Morning THIRTY-THREE Marzipan THIRTY-FOUR There Is Now THIRTY-FIVE Over The Hills And Far Away THIRTY-SIX The Broken Arrow THIRTY-SEVEN The Dunes THIRTY-EIGHT The Botanic Garden Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Philip Pullman Copyright Page The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations; The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up; The bones of death, the cov’ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry’d Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing, awakening, Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst. Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field, Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air; Let the inchained soul, shut up in darkness and in sighing, Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years, Rise and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open; And let his wife and children return from the oppressor’s scourge. They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream, Singing: “The Sun has left his blackness & has found a fresher morning, And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night; For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.” —from “America: A Prophecy” by William Blake O stars, isn’t it from you that the lover’s desire for the face of his beloved arises? Doesn’t his secret insight into her pure features come from the pure constellations? —from “The Third Elegy” by Rainer Maria Rilke Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living. The night is cold and delicate and full of angels Pounding down the living. The factories are all lit up, The chime goes unheard. We are together at last, though far apart. —from “The Ecclesiast” by John Ashbery THE AMBER SPYGLASS ONE THE ENCHANTED SLEEPER … while the beasts of prey, Come from caverns deep, Viewed the maid asleep … • WILLIAM BLAKE • In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half-hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below. The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the needles of the pine branches, the chitter of insects and the cries of small arboreal mammals, as well as the birdsong; and from time to time a stronger gust of wind would make one of the branches of a cedar or a fir move against another and groan like a cello. It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was never still, never constant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and brushing every pine cone with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles. There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village—little more than a cluster of herdsmen’s dwellings—at the foot of the valley to a half- ruined shrine near the glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the perpetual winds from the high mountains, and offerings of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley in perpetual rainbows. The cave lay some way above the path. Many years before, a holy man had