20

The Furnace-Man

At the same time, Lyra was in a railway carriage on the outskirts of the city of Prague. She had found it quite easy to buy a ticket in Paris without arousing too much suspicion, and it seemed that her imitation-of-Will method was working. Either that, or the citizens of the European towns she passed through were unusually incurious, or unusually polite. Or preoccupied: there was a tension in the streets, and she’d seen more uniforms like those she’d encountered on the ferry – groups of black-dressed men guarding a building, or standing in discussion on corners, or speeding out of underground garages in patrol cars with harsh air-cooled engines.

Or perhaps it was that a person with no visible dæmon wasn’t unimaginable. She had seen a woman in Amsterdam without one, beautiful, dressed in the height of fashion, confident, even arrogant, and indifferent to the curiosity of passers-by; and a man in Bruges had no dæmon, and made it worse for himself by the shameful, unhappy, self-conscious way he moved along a busy street hugging the shadows. She learned from both those examples, and bore herself with modesty and calm confidence. It was far from easy to do, and from time to time, when she was alone, she gave way to tears; but no one would know that.

She’d been brought to Prague by the flicker of a memory that darted into her mind as she saw the name of the city on a railway timetable. She and Pan had once, some years before, spent an evening poring over an old street map of the place, mentally constructing an image of it building by building. This was where the alethiometer had been invented, after all; and when she saw the name again, she recognised the little spark of memory as the secret commonwealth at work. She was becoming sensitive to these half-whispered promptings, getting better at recognising when they were not guesswork.

In Prague, though, she would have to make a decision. At the city was a junction of the Central European Railway Company, where lines of one gauge went north and east towards Kiev and Muscovy, and lines of a different and broader gauge went south through Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria towards Constantinople. The northern route would be the obvious one to take if she were going straight on to Central Asia and Karamakan; but that would do her no good, because she needed to find Pan before she tried to reach the place where the roses grew.

And he was – where? The Blue Hotel was the only clue she had, and its Arabic name suggested it lay a good deal further south than Muscovy. If she took the northern route and changed trains at Kiev she could take a different route south to Odessa, and cross the Black Sea by ferry to Trebizond and make her way south from there to Arabic-speaking lands; but without a stronger clue she might as well stick a pin in the atlas. The southern route through Constantinople was less complicated, but might take longer – or it might be quicker; and she didn’t know what her destination was in any case, except for the Arabic name of al-Khan al-Azraq.

What was more, the alethiometer was little help. The new method had such unpleasant physical consequences that after her first success she’d only tried it once again, and learned nothing. She could make a little progress with her existing knowledge of the symbols, but without the books it was like trying to thread a needle while wearing boxing gloves.

The only idea she had about what to do next if she did manage to find Pan was bound up with the phrase the Silk Road, the route of the ancient camel trains that led directly into Central Asia. But the Silk Road wasn’t a railway. It wasn’t even a single road: it was a multitude of different routes. It wouldn’t be swift and easy; she would have to go at the walking pace of whatever animals they used for transport – camels, no doubt. And it would be a long journey, and unless she and Pan were somehow reconciled it would be a hard one.

She’d been thinking about it for some time. She hadn’t spoken to anyone since she’d said goodbye to the Welsh miners in Bruges – anyone, that is, except for waiters and railway officials. She longed for her dæmon; even the unfriendly Pan of recent months was at least another voice, another point of view. How hard it was to think when half of your self was missing!

It was already dark when the train drew into the station in the heart of Prague. She was glad of that, and she thought it might not be too unusual to see a young woman travelling alone, because Prague was a sophisticated city, and students of music and other arts came from all parts of central Europe, and beyond, to study there.

She handed in her ticket at the barrier and moved away from the rush-hour crowd of passengers to look for an information office where she might find timetables and, if she was lucky, a map. The main concourse was built and decorated in a flamboyant baroque style, with sculptures of naked gods and goddesses holding up every window frame or gas lamp, and stone vegetation twining around every column. Every wall was set with pilasters and niches. There was hardly a surface that was plain and clear, and Lyra was glad of that, because she felt safer in all the visual confusion.

She made herself look firmly at a point ahead of her and walk towards it with confident determination. It didn’t matter if it was a coffee-stall or the steps to the administrative offices: anything would do; she just had to look as if she made this journey every day.

And she was successful. No one stopped and stared, no one shouted out in angry fear to denounce this freakish young woman with no dæmon, no one seemed to notice her at all. When she reached the end of the concourse she looked around for the ticket office, where she hoped to find someone who spoke English.

Before she saw it, however, she felt a hand on her arm.

She jumped with alarm, and instantly thought: Wrong! I mustn’t look fearful. The man whose hand it was stood back, himself alarmed at causing such a reaction. He was middle-aged, spectacled, dressed in a dark suit and a discreet tie, carrying a briefcase: every inch a law-abiding and respectable citizen.

He said something in Czech.

She shrugged, trying to look rueful, and shook her head.

‘English?’ he said.

She nodded reluctantly. And then, with an even greater shock than she’d felt a moment ago, she realised that, like her, he had no dæmon. Her eyes widened, her mouth opened to speak, she glanced over his shoulder, to left and right, and then she shut her mouth again, uncertain what to say.

‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘We have no dæmons. Walk calmly with me and we will not be noticed. Pretend you know me. Pretend to talk.’

She nodded, and fell into step beside him as he walked through the rush-hour throng, making for the main exit.

‘What is your name?’ she said quietly.

‘Vaclav Kubiček.’

Something about that was familiar, but the impression came and went in a second.

‘And yours?’

‘Lyra Silvertongue. How did you know I … Did you just see me and decide to speak to me on impulse?’

‘I was expecting you. I didn’t know your name or anything about you except that you were one of us.’

‘One of … one of who? And how were you expecting me?’

‘There is a man who needs your help. He told me you were coming.’

‘I— Before we do anything else, I need a railway timetable.’

‘Do you speak any Czech?’

‘Not a word.’

‘Then let me ask for you. Where do you want to go?’

‘I need to know the times of the trains to Muscovy, and those of the other railway to Constantinople.’

‘Please come with me. I shall get those for you. There is an information bureau through that door,’ he said, pointing to the corner of the great concourse.

She went with him. Inside the bureau he spoke rapidly to the official behind the desk, who asked him something in return. Kubiček turned to Lyra and said, ‘Do you desire to travel all the way to Constantinople, if you go that way?’

‘Yes, all the way.’

‘And similarly, all the way to Moscow?’

‘Beyond Moscow. How far does the line go? Does it go on through Siberia?’

He turned to translate. The official listened, and then swivelled round in his chair to take two leaflets from the rack beside him.

Kubiček said, ‘He was not very helpful. But I do know that the Muscovy line goes as far as Irkutsk on Lake Baikal.’

‘I see,’ said Lyra.

The official slid the leaflets across the desk, his eyes tired and unseeing, and then went on with the work he’d been doing. Lyra put the leaflets in her rucksack and then turned away with Kubiček, thinking that this man was clearly practised at Will’s art; perhaps she could learn from him.

She said, ‘Where are we going, Mr Kubiček?’

‘To my house in the old city. I shall explain as we walk.’

They left the station and stood facing a busy square where traffic was flowing swiftly. The shopfronts were brightly lit, there were cafés and restaurants thronged with people, trams went past with a smooth humming from the anbaric wires above them.

‘Before you say anything else,’ said Lyra, ‘what did you mean when you said that I was one of us? Who is us?’

‘Those whose dæmons have deserted them.’

‘I had no idea—’ Lyra began, but then the traffic lights changed, and Kubiček set off quickly across the road so she had to say no more until they reached the other side. She began again: ‘Until recently I didn’t realise that this could happen to anyone. Anyone other than me, I mean.’

‘You felt alone?’

‘Desperately. We could separate, but of course we kept that secret as far as we could. Then in recent months … I don’t know how to describe it to you. I don’t know you at all.’

‘There are some of us in Prague. A small number. We met by chance, or by hearing about one another from those who are not afraid of us – we do have a few friends – and we have discovered other networks of acquaintanceship in other places. It is a secret society, if you like. If you tell me where you are going next, I can give you names and addresses of some people like us in that place. They will understand and help if you need it. If I might suggest … we should move away from this light.’

She nodded, and walked on beside him, marvelling at what he’d said.

‘I had no idea,’ she said again. ‘I knew nothing about this way of being. I was sure people would see it at once and hate me for it. Some did, in fact.’

‘We have all experienced that.’

‘When did your dæmon leave? Is that a question it’s polite to ask? You see, I know so little.’

‘Oh, we can talk of this very openly among ourselves. One thing I should say is that, before she left, we knew that we could separate.’

He glanced at Lyra, who saw and nodded.

‘I think that is common among us,’ he went on. ‘There is a sudden danger, or an emergency, some absolutely compelling reason, and you separate for the first time. It is agonising, of course. But you survive, no? And then it is easier. In our case we came to disagree about many things, and to find that we were unhappy together.’

‘Yes …’

‘Then one day she must have decided that we would be less unhappy if we were apart,’ he went on. ‘She may have been right in her case. Anyway, she left. Maybe there is a secret society of dæmons too, as there is of us. Maybe they help one another as we do. Maybe they watch us. Maybe they have forgotten all about us. We manage to live, all the same. We are quiet; we attract very little attention. We do no harm.’

‘Have you tried to find her?’

‘Every time I open my eyes I hope she will be there. I have walked down every street, every alley, I have looked in every park, every garden, every church, even in every café, but we all do this, we all begin by doing this. It is my dread that I will see her with a man who is me, who is my double. But so far … nothing.

‘But I did not find you in order to tell you about myself. Earlier this week, something else happened. A man arrived in our city and came to my house, who … I would describe him to you, but I cannot find the words, in Czech or English or Latin. He is the strangest person I have ever known, and his predicament is appalling. He knows about you, and he says that you will be able to help. I agreed to invite you to meet him and listen to what he has to say.’

‘He said I— But how did he know about me?’

And she’d been thinking that she could move across Europe and on into Asia unnoticed, unsuspected.

‘I don’t know. There is much about him that is mysterious. He too has lost his dæmon, but in a different manner … It is very hard to describe, but you will understand at once when you see him. You will understand, but perhaps you will not believe what you see. Possibly this is something that we in Prague would find easier to believe than those who live elsewhere. The hidden world exists, with its own passions and preoccupations, and from time to time its affairs leak through into the visible world. In Prague maybe the veil between the worlds is thinner than in other places – I don’t know.’

‘The secret commonwealth,’ said Lyra.

‘Indeed? I did not know that expression.’

‘Well, if I can help, I will. Of course. But my most important task is to go east.’

They went on towards the river, the Vltava. Kubiček explained that the river was the route by which most travellers entered and left the city, though the railway was beginning to rival it in popularity. His own house, Kubiček said, lay on the other side of the river in the Malá Strana.

‘Have you heard of Zlatá ulička?’ he asked.

‘No. What is that?’

‘It is the street where people think the alchemists used to make their gold. It is very close to my apartment.’

‘Do people still believe in alchemy?’

‘No. Educated people do not. So they think alchemists are fools for pursuing a goal that does not exist, and they take no notice of them, and fail to see what they are really doing.’

A bell rang in her memory: Sebastian Makepeace, the Oxford alchemist! He’d told her almost the same thing four years before.

They came to the river. Kubiček looked carefully all around before stepping forward towards the bridge, a wide and ancient structure with statues of kings and saints set along the parapet. The houses on the other side were old, crowded together, with narrow streets and crooked alleys between them, and high above behind them stood a castle that was lit by floodlights. Despite the cold, the bridge was busy and the streets crowded; lights glowed from every shop window and tavern, and gas lamps flared between the statues on the bridge.

At the foot of the bridge on the Malá Strana side of the river there was a landing stage where a paddle-steamer was carefully drawing up. As Lyra and Kubiček went further across, they could see a number of passengers on the deck waiting for the gangway to be lowered so they could come ashore. They hadn’t been on a pleasure cruise; they were carrying suitcases, or rucksacks, or boxes tied with string, or loaded baskets and carrier bags. They looked as if they were fleeing some disaster.

‘Did your strange man arrive on a boat like this?’ said Lyra.

‘Yes.’

‘Where are those people travelling from?’

‘From the south; ultimately, from the Black Sea or further. The boats travel on from here to the north where this river joins the Elbe, and from there to Hamburg and the German Ocean.’

‘Does every boat that lands here carry passengers like those? They look like refugees.’

‘More and more of them arrive every day. The Magisterium has begun to encourage each province of the Church to regulate its territory with a firmer hand. In Bohemia things are not yet as savage as elsewhere; refugees are still given sanctuary. But that can’t go on indefinitely. We shall have to begin turning them away before too long.’

In their short walk through the city, Lyra had already noticed a few people huddled in doorways, or sleeping on benches. She’d supposed they were beggars, and she was sorry to see that such a fine city cared so little for the poor. Now she watched as a family came down the gangway on to the landing stage: an old woman leaning on a stick, a mother with a baby in her arms and four other children, all under ten by the look of them. Each child carried a box or a bag or a suitcase, and they were all struggling. Behind them came an old man and a boy in his early teens, carrying a rolled-up mattress between them.

‘Where will they go?’ said Lyra.

‘At first, to the Bureau of Asylum. After that, on to the streets if they have no money. Come. This way.’

Lyra walked a little faster, as he did. Once across the river, they made for the twisting maze of little alleys under the castle. Kubiček took so many turns that she soon lost track of where they might be.

‘You will help me find the way back to the station?’ she said.

‘Of course. We are quite close now.’

‘Can you tell me anything about this man you want me to see?’

‘His name is Cornelis van Dongen. Dutch, as you may guess. I would rather let him tell you the rest.’

‘Suppose I can’t help him? What will he do then?’

‘Then it would be much the worse for me, and for all the citizens of Malá Strana, and beyond Malá Strana too.’

‘That’s giving me a large responsibility, Mr Kubiček.’

‘I know you will bear it.’

She said nothing, but she felt for the first time how stupid she’d been to walk into this warren of ancient houses and alleyways with a man she knew nothing about.

Here and there a gaslight flaring on a bracket shone on the wet street, on the cobbles, on the shutters over the windows. The noise of the traffic, the clatter of iron wheels on stone, the drone of the anbaric trams, grew less and less noticeable as they went further in. There were fewer people to be seen, though sometimes they would pass a doorway with a man lounging against the wall, or a woman standing under a lamp. They would look at Kubiček and Lyra and mutter a comment, or cough consumptively, or simply sigh.

‘Not far now,’ said Kubiček.

‘I’m completely lost,’ said Lyra.

‘I’ll show you the way out, don’t worry.’

Round one more corner, and then Kubiček took a key from his pocket and unlocked the heavy oak door of a tall house. He went in ahead of Lyra and struck a match, lighting a naphtha lamp and holding it up so she could see to pick her way through the columns of books that stood on both sides of the narrow hall. There were bookshelves too, rising to the ceiling, but clearly Kubiček had long ago filled them, and had to resort to the floor. The steps of a staircase that led up into the gloom were themselves laden with books on each side. The air of the place was cold and damp, with the smell of leather bindings and old paper overlaying that of cabbage and bacon.

‘Please come this way,’ said Kubiček. ‘My guest is not actually inside the building. I am a book dealer, and … You will understand in little more than a minute.’

Carrying the lamp, he led Lyra into a little kitchen, which was clean and tidy and clear of books except for three small piles on the table. Kubiček put the lamp down and unlocked the back door.

‘Please will you come this way?’ he said.

Apprehensive, Lyra followed. Kubiček had left the lamp inside, and the little yard behind the house was almost dark, but for the glow of the city that pervaded the air above. But for that, and for—

Lyra caught her breath.

In the little courtyard stood a man in rough clothes who gave off such heat that she couldn’t go close. He was like a furnace. She could see his gaunt face, alive with anguish, and she had to gasp as two little flames broke out from under his eyelids, to be dashed away like tears by his angry hand. His eyes were glowing like coals: black over a flaring, breathing red. He had no dæmon that Lyra could see.

He spoke to Kubiček, and flame spilled out of his mouth. His voice had the quiet roaring, bubbling sound of an over-fed fire in a small fireplace, the kind of fire that threatens to set the chimney ablaze.

Kubiček said in English, ‘This is Lyra Silvertongue. Miss Silvertongue, may I introduce Cornelis van Dongen?’

Van Dongen said, ‘I cannot shake your hand. I salute you. Please, I beg you, help me.’

‘If I can, I will, but – how? What can I do for you?’

‘Find my dæmon. She is nearby. She is in Prague. Find her for me.’

She supposed he meant with the alethiometer. And she’d have to use the new method, and that would leave her prostrate with sickness.

‘I need to know—’ she began, but shook her head, helpless.

The dark man who burned like a furnace stood with hands outstretched, palms upward, pleading. A row of little flames broke out from under the fingernails of his left hand, and he crushed them out in his right palm.

‘What do you need to know?’ he said, his voice sounding like that of a gas flame.

‘Oh, everything – I don’t know! Is she – like you?’

‘No. I am all fire, and she is all water. I long for her. She is longing for me …’

Tears of flame gushed from his eyes, and he stooped to pick up a handful of earth and rubbed it into them until the flames went out. Lyra was filled with pity and horror. She could make him out a little more clearly now her eyes were accustomed to the dark, and his face seemed like that of a wounded animal, aware of its suffering but of nothing that could explain it, so the whole universe was complicit in its pain and terror. The man’s clothing, she realised in passing, was made of asbestos cloth.

Her expression must have been visible to him, and it made him shrink away, ashamed, which added to the shame she felt herself. What could she do? What in the world could she do?

But she had to do something.

‘I need to know more about her,’ she said. ‘Her name, for example. Why you’re separated. Where you come from.’

‘Her name is Dinessa. We come from the Dutch Republic. My father is a natural philosopher, and my mother died when we were young. My dæmon and I loved to help my father in his workshop, his laboratory, where he worked on his magnum opus, which was the isolation of the essential principles of matter …’

As he spoke, the heat coming from his body seemed to increase, and Lyra found herself stepping back a little. Kubiček was standing in the doorway, respectfully attending to everything they said. The yard they were in seemed to be shared by the other buildings behind, whose windows overlooked it, and as Lyra turned her face away for a second’s relief from the heat she saw lights glowing and one or two people moving around; but no one was looking out.

‘Please go on,’ she said.

‘I said that Dinessa and I loved to help him in his work. It felt grand and important to us. All we knew was that he was having conversations, interchanges, with immortal spirits, and what they had to say was far above our understandings. One day he spoke to us about the elements of fire and water—’ He broke off for a few moments to sob helplessly in great gouts of flame.

Kubiček said, ‘Van Dongen, please – not so much …’ He was looking anxiously up at the windows of the buildings overlooking the little courtyard.

‘I am a human being!’ the furnace-man cried. ‘Even now I am human!’

He pressed his hands over his eyes and rocked back and forth. There was nothing he needed so much as an embrace, and such a human contact would never be offered.

‘What happened?’ urged Lyra, helpless with pity.

‘My father was interested in change,’ van Dongen said after another moment. ‘In one thing becoming another, while other things do not change. Naturally we trusted him and thought no harm could come of what he did. We were proud to be helping with such a great task. So when he wanted to work with us, with the connection between the two of us, while Dinessa could still change, we agreed at once.

‘It was a long process that wearied and troubled us, me and my dæmon, but we persevered and did all that he asked of us. My father was anxious about our safety, anxious about everything, because he truly loved us as much as he loved knowledge. And in the course of one experiment, he assimilated our essential self to the elements: me to the nature of elemental fire, her to that of elemental water. Then he found he could not undo this operation – that it was permanent. I am like this, and my dæmon cannot live in the air, but has to breathe water and live her life in it.’ A flame broke out on his brow, and he swiped a hand across to smother it.

‘Why were you separated?’ Lyra said.

‘Once we were transformed in that way, we were each other’s only comfort and consolation, but now we could never touch, never embrace. It was a torment. We had to remain hidden in the house and grounds, my dæmon in a pool of water and myself in a hut constructed of iron sheets. The servants were bribed to keep quiet about us. My father did everything he could to keep us concealed, but it was costing him money; he was selling everything he could to meet the expense. We didn’t know. How would we know? We knew nothing. Finally he came to us and said, “I am so sorry, my child, but I can afford to keep you concealed no longer. The Magisterium has heard rumours, and if they find out about you they will arrest me and kill you. I have had to ask the advice of a great magician. He is coming tomorrow to see you. Maybe he will be able to help.”

‘False words! Oh, false hopes and false words!’

Cascades of flame ran down his cheeks, and the blaze lit up the backs of all the other buildings, and made flaring shadows on the walls. Lyra stood helplessly watching. Van Dongen wiped his asbestos sleeve over his face, and brushed off little sparks that fell to the ground and squirmed and flared and died quickly.

Kubiček stepped forward a little way and said, ‘Please, van Dongen, please try to avoid exciting yourself. This is the only place we can talk without danger to the building, but anyone could look out at any time, and—’

‘I know. I know. Please forgive me.’

He sighed, and a cloud of smoke and flame gushed from his mouth, and vanished in the air.

Van Dongen sank to his knees, and then twisted himself down to sit on the ground cross-legged. His head was bowed, his hands in his lap.

‘The magician arrived. He was called Johannes Agrippa, and he looked at us, at me and Dinessa, and went to my father’s study to talk in private. There he made my father an offer: he would pay a considerable sum to take my dæmon away, but he would not take me. My father accepted the offer. As if she was an animal, as if she was a block of marble, he gave that man my dæmon, my only companion, the one being who could understand the full misery of our existence. She begged and pleaded, I sobbed and implored, but he was stronger, he had always been stronger, and he went through with his transaction. My dear dæmon was sold to the magician, and arrangements were made to transport her to the city of Prague where he lived. The agony of parting was indescribable. I was kept from them by force until they were far away, and as soon as I was free I set off to find her. But here she still is, somewhere, and I would tear down every wall and set every house ablaze, I would bring about a conflagration that would dwarf every great fire that ever burned, but she would perish in the process and I would be destroyed before I saw her again.

‘I must know where she is, Miss Silvertongue. I believe you could tell me. Please tell me where to find my daemon.’

Lyra said, ‘How do you know about me?’

‘In the world of the spirits your name is famous.’

‘What is this world of the spirits? It is nothing I know about. I don’t know what spirit is.’

‘Spirit is what matter does.’

That disconcerted her. She didn’t know how to respond, and then Kubiček said, ‘It is your secret commonwealth, perhaps.’

Lyra turned back to van Dongen and said, ‘Do you know how the alethiometer works? How I use it?’

He looked bewildered. He spread his hands, and at once a flame broke out in the centre of each palm. He beat them on the ground to put them out.

‘Alethi—’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know that word. What is that?’

‘I thought that’s what you wanted me to use. The alethiometer. It tells the truth, but it’s very hard to read. Isn’t that what you meant?’

He shook his head. Little tears ran down his cheeks like lava. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ he cried. ‘But you will know! You will know!’

‘But that’s all I’ve got … No, wait. There’s this, too.’

It was the battered notebook that Pan had left with his cruel note, the one carried all the way from Central Asia by the murdered man Hassall. She realised that that was where she’d seen Kubiček’s name before, and why she’d felt that flicker in her memory. She tugged the notebook out of her rucksack, and flicked through it urgently to find the entry for Prague.

It was too dark to read, so she had to kneel beside the furnace-man and use the fierce light from his eyes to see it by. And yes, there was Kubiček, with his address in the Malá Strana. There were five names with Prague addresses, including Kubiček’s, each written in a different hand with a different pen. But there was also one more, written sideways to fit it on the page, and in pencil, and there it was: Doctor Johannes Agrippa.

‘Got it!’ said Lyra, and tried to look more closely, but the light from van Dongen’s eyes was too hot to bear. She scrambled up and said, ‘Mr Kubiček, can you read it? I can’t quite make out the address.’

Van Dongen got to his feet too, eager to see. He was beating his hands together, striking sparks out of himself that whirled in the air like tiny Catherine wheels. One of them flew all the way to Lyra’s hand and stung like a needle-thrust. She gasped and slapped it out, and stepped away hastily.

‘Oh – sorry – sorry …’ the Dutchman said. ‘Just read it. Read it.’

‘Please, not so loud!’ said Kubiček. ‘I beg you, van Dongen, keep your voice down! The address is … Ah. I see.’

‘What is it? Where does he live?’ came in a subdued roar of flame from van Dongen’s throat.

‘Starý Železniční Most forty-three. That is not far away. It’s a place where … I suppose a sort of area of workshops. Under an old railway bridge. I would not have expected—’

‘Take me there!’ said van Dongen. ‘We’ll go now.’

‘If I told you where it was – if I gave you a map—’

‘No! Impossible. You must help. You, miss, you will come too. He will respect you, at least.’

Lyra doubted that, but she would have to go with them, if she wanted Kubiček to guide her to the railway station afterwards. She nodded. In any case she was curious, and relieved to have been spared a session with the new method.

Kubiček said, ‘Please, van Dongen, walk quietly and say little. We are just three people walking home, nothing more than that.’

‘Yes, yes. Come on.’

Kubiček led the way through the house and outside, the Dutchman walking with the greatest care between the piles of books, and Lyra keeping her distance from him as she followed.

The dark lanes and crooked streets of the Malá Strana were mostly empty, with only a cat or two prowling or a rat scuttling into an alley. They saw no human beings until they came out to a rough patch of ground beside a high factory wall. There was a group of men gathered around a brazier, sitting on boxes or piles of sacks, smoking and staring at them as they passed. Kubiček murmured a polite greeting, which the men ignored, and Lyra felt the force of their interest as their heads turned to follow her as she stumbled over the uneven ground, trying to avoid the potholes and the oil-tinted puddles. Van Dongen didn’t even appear to see the men, and they didn’t seem interested in him; he was intent only on the stone arches of the old railway bridge towards which they were moving.

‘Is that the place? Is that it?’ he said, and a jet of flame gushed out and ballooned above him before fading. Lyra heard a grunt of alarm from the men around the brazier.

In front of them the old bridge reared high above the waste ground. Under each of the arches was a door, some of wood, some of rusted steel, some of little more than cardboard. Most were padlocked. Two of them were open, with naphtha lamps throwing a yellow pool of light on the ground outside. In one a mechanic was assembling an engine, his monkey-dæmon handing him the parts, and in the other, an elderly woman was selling a small packet of herbs to a ravaged-looking younger woman, who might have been pregnant.

Van Dongen was striding up and down the row of doors, looking for number 43.

‘It’s not here!’ he said. ‘There’s no forty-three!’

Gouts of flame coughed out with his words. The mechanic stopped with a carburettor in his hand, and looked out at them.

‘Van Dongen,’ pleaded Kubiček, and the Dutchman shut his mouth. He was breathing heavily. His eyes glowed like searchlights.

‘The numbers aren’t in order,’ Lyra said.

‘In Prague houses are numbered in the order in which they were built,’ Kubiček whispered. ‘It is the same with these workshops. You have to check every one.’

He kept looking back at the men around the brazier. Lyra glanced as well, and saw that two of them were now standing up and watching. Van Dongen was hurrying from door to door along the whole length of the waste ground, looking quickly at each one, leaving a trail of cinders and burnt grass. Lyra went along behind him, checking more closely, and found some of the numbers easy to read, painted roughly in white or scrawled in chalk, but others faded and peeling and nearly impossible to make out.

But then she saw a door more solidly built than most, of dark oak with heavy iron hinges. A bronze lion mask was fastened beside it to the bricks of the arch itself. The number 43 was scratched, as if with a nail, in the centre of the door.

She stepped back and called softly, ‘Mr Kubiček! Mr van Dongen! This is the one!’

They both came at once, Kubiček treading delicately through the puddles, van Dongen at a rush. Lyra was somehow in charge now, though she didn’t know why. She knocked firmly on the door.

A voice spoke instantly from the bronze lion. ‘Who are you?’ it said.

‘Travellers,’ Lyra answered. ‘We have heard of the wisdom of the great master Dr Johannes Agrippa, and we want to ask for his guidance.’

Only then did she realise that the voice had spoken in English, and that she had automatically responded in the same language.

‘The Master is busy,’ said the lion mask. ‘Come back next week.’

‘No, because we shall be long gone by then. We need to see him now. And … I have a message from the Dutch Republic.’

Kubiček was clutching Lyra’s arm, and van Dongen was wiping away the little flames breaking out all around his mouth. They waited for a short while, and then the mask spoke again: ‘Master Agrippa will grant you five minutes. Enter and wait.’

The door opened by itself, and a gust of smoky air, laden with dusty odours of herbs and spices and minerals, wafted out to surround them. Van Dongen immediately tried to push past Lyra, but she put out her hand and held him back – at once regretting it: her palm and fingers felt as if she’d tried to pick up a piece of red-hot iron.

She clutched the hand to her breast, trying not to cry out, and went into the workshop ahead of the other two. The door closed behind them at once. The brick walls and the concrete floor were lit very dimly by a single pearl hanging by a thread from the ceiling, its glow brightening and fading with a rhythm like breathing. In its light they saw – nothing. The place was empty.

‘Where should we go?’ Lyra said.

‘Down,’ came in a whisper from the air.

Van Dongen pointed to the corner. ‘There!’ A great billow of flame came out of his mouth and spread across the ceiling before vanishing.

In the light from his voice they saw a trap door. Van Dongen hastened to pull up the iron ring at one end, but Lyra said, ‘No! Don’t you touch anything. In fact, don’t you come down at all. You stay up here till I tell you. Mr Kubiček, make sure he does.’

‘Soon, soon,’ said Kubiček to the Dutchman, and they both retreated to the far corner as Lyra lifted up the trap door.

A flight of wooden steps led down almost immediately inside the entrance towards a cellar lit by a lurid flare. Lyra made her way down and halted at the foot to look in at the room. It had a vaulted ceiling, black with the smoke of centuries. A large furnace stood in the very centre, under a copper hood that went up through the ceiling as a chimney. Around the walls, hanging from the ceiling, or standing on the floor were a thousand different objects: retorts and crucibles; earthenware jars; open-topped boxes containing salt, or pigment, or dried herbs; books of every size and age, some lying open, some crammed into shelves; philosophical instruments, compasses, a photo-mill, a camera lucida, a rack of Leyden jars, a Van de Graaff generator; a jumble of bones, some of which might have been human, various plants under dusty glass domes, and an immensity of other objects. Lyra thought: Makepeace! It reminded her powerfully of the Oxford alchemist’s laboratory.

And standing by the furnace, in the red glare from the burning coals, was a man in rough workman’s clothing stirring a cauldron in which something pungent was boiling. He was reciting what might have been a spell in what might have been Hebrew. What she could see of his face showed him to be of middle years, proud, impatient, and strong, the master of considerable intellectual force. He didn’t seem to have seen her.

For a moment she was reminded of her own father, but she moved away from that thought at once, and looked at the other large object in the cellar, which was a tank of stone some ten feet long and six wide, with sides as high as her waist.

And the tank was full of water, and in the water, twisting, speeding from end to end and back again, twining herself like honeysuckle growing up a branch, never still, never less than perfectly graceful and lovely, was the mermaid-formed dæmon of Cornelis van Dongen: Dinessa the water-sprite.

She was beautiful, and naked, and her black hair streamed out behind her like fronds of the most delicate seaweed. As she turned at the far end of the tank she caught sight of Lyra, and, like the quickest fish, darted towards her.

Before she could break the surface, Lyra put her finger to her lips and pointed to the magician deep in his spell. The water-sprite understood, and fell still, looking up through the surface at Lyra with eyes that implored. Lyra nodded and tried to smile, and then noticed what stood over the tank: a vast complexity of iron pistons, valves, connecting-rods, wheels, crankshafts, and other parts whose names she didn’t know and whose function was unguessable.

Lyra heard a cry from behind her, and a gust of flame singed her hair. She turned to see van Dongen halfway down the steps, with Kubiček trying to hold him back, but flinching from the pain. Lyra’s scorched palm throbbed in sympathy.

And then they were at the bottom, on the cellar floor—

At once a tumult broke out. The stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling twisted in its chains, and writhed and lashed its tail and roared; a row of dusty glass bottles, gallon-sized or larger, containing strange specimens, foetuses, homunculi, cephalopods, glowed with light as the dead creatures inside beat their fists on the glass or sobbed with fury or hurled themselves from side to side; a metal bird in a dusty cage sang raucously; the water in Dinessa’s tank shrank away from van Dongen, and rose up in a great wave to stand suspended and trembling in the air with the water-dæmon inside, like an insect trapped in amber, though she saw her man and reached both arms out of the water and into the air, calling, ‘Cornelis! Cornelis!’

It was all happening too quickly for anyone to stop. Van Dongen, crying, ‘Dinessa!’ hurled himself at the standing wave, and Dinessa burst out of it and into his arms.

They came together in an explosion of steam and flame. For a second Lyra could see their faces, lurid, enraptured, pressing themselves together in a final embrace. Then they were gone, and something was happening among the machinery above the tank. Jets of superheated steam were forcing their way into the cylinders and slamming the pistons to and fro, making the connecting-rods swing backwards and forwards as they turned a gigantic wheel, everything moving with the smooth ticking of lubricated machinery.

Lyra and Kubiček could only stand back in shock. Then she turned to the sorcerer, who was shutting his book with the air of having completed a long and arduous task.

‘What have you done?’ she found herself saying.

‘Started my engine,’ he said.

‘But how? Where are they, the man and his dæmon?’

‘They are both fulfilling the destiny they were created for.’

‘They weren’t created for this!’

‘You know nothing about it. I arranged for their birth, I brought the daemon here for this work, but her boy escaped. No matter. I arranged for you to find him and bring him here. Now your part is over, and you can leave.’

‘Their father betrayed them, and you did this to them!’

‘I am their father.’

Lyra was dazed. The machinery was working faster now. She could feel the whole cellar trembling with the force of it. The crocodile had fallen still, apart from the slow swing of its tail; the homunculi in their bottle had stopped screaming and banging on the glass, and were floating contentedly in the fluid that contained them, which was now glowing a faint and steady red; the metal bird in its cage, its golden feathers now gleaming with rich enamels and precious stones, was singing as sweetly as a nightingale.

Agrippa stood calmly, book in hand, as if waiting for Lyra to ask a question.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why do it like this? Why sacrifice two lives? Couldn’t you build a fire in the normal way?’

‘This is not a normal fire.’

‘Tell me why,’ Lyra said again.

‘This is not a normal engine. Not a normal fire. Not normal steam.’

‘That’s all they were? Just a different kind of steam? Steam is steam.’

‘Nothing is only itself.’

‘That’s not true. Nothing is any more than what it is,’ Lyra said, quoting Gottfried Brande, feeling uneasy as she did.

‘You’ve fallen for that lie, have you?’

‘You think it’s a lie?’

‘One of the biggest lies ever told. I thought you would have more imagination than to believe it.’

That took her aback. ‘What do you know about me?’ she said.

‘As much as I need to.’

‘Will I ever find my dæmon?’

‘Yes, but not in the way you think.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Everything is connected.’

Lyra thought about that. ‘What is my connection with this?’ she said.

‘It has brought you to the one man who can tell you whether to go east or south on the next stage of your journey.’

Then she felt dizzy. This was all impossible, and it was all happening. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Which way should I go?’

‘Look in your clavicula.’ He gestured towards her notebook.

She turned to the page with the added lines in pencil, and found under his name and address something she’d missed before: the words Tell her to go south.

‘Who wrote this?’ she said.

‘The same man who wrote my name and address: Master Sebastian Makepeace.’

Lyra had to grasp the side of the stone tank. ‘But how did he—’

‘You’ll find that out in due course. There’s no point in my telling you now. You would not understand.’

She felt a light touch on her arm, and looked round to see Kubiček, looking pale and nervous.

‘In a minute,’ said Lyra, and to Agrippa she said: ‘Tell me about Dust. You know what I mean by Dust?’

‘I have heard of Dust, of the Rusakov field, of course I have. You think I still live in the seventeenth century? I read all the scientific journals. Some of them are very funny. Let me tell you something else. You have an alethiometer, do you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘The alethiometer is not the only way to read Dust, not even the best way.’

‘What other ways are there?’

‘I will tell you one, that is all. A pack of cards.’

‘You mean the Tarot?’

‘No, I do not. That is an egregious modern fraud designed to extract money from gullible romantics. I mean a pack of cards with pictures on them. Simple pictures. You will know it when you see one.’

‘What can you tell me about something called the secret commonwealth?’

‘That is a name for the world I deal with, the world of hidden things and hidden relationships. It is the reason that nothing is only itself.’

‘Two more questions. I want to find a place called the Blue Hotel, al-Khan al-Azraq, to look for my dæmon. Have you heard of that?’

‘Yes. It has another name: it’s sometimes called Madinat al-Qamar, the City of the Moon.’

‘And where is it?’

‘Between Seleukeia and Aleppo. You can reach it from either of those cities. But you will not find your dæmon without great pain and difficulty, and he will not be able to leave with you unless you make a great sacrifice. Are you ready for that?’

‘Yes. And my second question: what does the word akterrakeh mean?

‘Where have you heard that expression?’

‘In connection with a place called Karamakan. It’s a way of travelling, or something like that. When you have to go akterrakeh.’

‘It’s Latin.’

‘What? Really?’

‘Aqua terraque.’

‘Water and land …’

‘By water and by land.’

‘Oh. So that means – what?’

‘There are some special places where you can only go if you and your dæmon travel separately. One must go by water, the other by land.’

‘But this place is in the middle of a desert! There isn’t any water.’

‘Not so. The place you mean is between the desert and the wandering lake. The salt marshes and shallow streams of Lop Nor, where the watercourses shift and move about unpredictably.’

‘Ah! I see,’ she said.

What Strauss wrote on those tattered pages she’d found in Hassall’s rucksack had suddenly become clear. So much became clear! The men had had to separate from their dæmons to travel to the red building, and Strauss’s dæmon had arrived successfully, so he and she could enter; but Hassall’s dæmon hadn’t made it, though they must have found each other later. So that was how it worked; and she’d only be able to go there herself if Pan agreed to go through Lop Nor while she went through the desert; and then she’d be able to go into the red building. And as the clarification spread through her mind, blowing away all the mist and doubt, she remembered the feeling she’d had when she first read Strauss’s journal: she was certain that she knew what was in the building. The knowledge flickered with promise like a mirage, but it still trembled just out of her reach.

She stood in the smoky cellar, with the steady confident beat of the pistons and the connecting-rods and the valves above her testifying to the unity at last of Cornelis and Dinessa, and tried to bring her attention back to Agrippa.

‘How do you know about that?’ she said. ‘Have you made the journey yourself?’

‘No more questions. Be on your way.’

Kubiček pulled at her sleeve, and she went with him to the staircase. She looked back at the cellar, where everything was alive, and where great hidden purposes were at work. Agrippa was already reaching for a box of herbs, clearing a space on a workbench, taking down a set of scales. The steam engine had settled down into a quiet, powerful rhythm, and then Lyra saw the magician reach out a hand and take a small box that had seemingly floated to him by itself. Little lights glowed over a number of different jars, bottles, boxes around the shelves, and beside two drawers in a great mahogany cabinet. The sorcerer took something from every container lit in this way, and as he did so the spirit (Lyra could find no other word) responsible for the light flew across the cellar and joined its fellow on the bench. Everything in his cellar seemed alive and full of purpose, and Agrippa was perfectly busy, perfectly calm and in charge of what he was doing, completely fulfilled, and eager for the next stage in his work.

She followed Kubiček up the stairs and out into the empty waste ground. The men had gone, and the brazier was burning low. The cold air flooded into her grateful lungs and connected her with the night sky, as if it was a wind from the millions of stars.

‘Well, it’s clear that I need the train for the south,’ she said. ‘Will I make it to the station on time?’

A bell in the nearby cathedral struck two.

‘If we go there at once,’ said Kubiček.

She went with him through the old city to the river and across the bridge. Lights glowed in some of the boats on the water; a cargo-barge went past, moving on the current with a load of great pine logs towards the Elbe, and Hamburg and the German Ocean; a tram trundled along the rails at the far end of the bridge, with three late travellers in its lighted interior.

Neither of them spoke till they reached the station. Then Kubiček said, ‘I’ll help you buy your ticket. But first, let me see your clavicula.’

He flicked through the little notebook.

‘Ah,’ he said with satisfaction.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘To see if it had the name and address of someone in Smyrna. There is no one like us in Constantinople, but if you go on to Smyrna you will find this lady helpful.’

She put the little notebook away, and shook his hand, forgetting till it was too late that her own had been painfully scorched.

‘You had a strange evening in Prague,’ said Kubiček as they went towards the one lighted window in the booking office.

‘But valuable. Thank you for your help.’

Five minutes later she was inside a sleeper cabin, alone, exhausted, in some pain from her burned hand, but alive and exultant, with a destination and a clear purpose at last. And five minutes after that the train began to move, and she was fast asleep.