At Stonehenge
Will prods at the air with the Knife. It has been two years since he last held it, so it is no surprise to him that his first attempt at using it should fail. He just needs to concentrate his mind at the tip, feel it slide between the dimensions, and watch for the right point at which to cut through the warp and weft of space-time.
Now – forward with the blade. Slide it from side to side, looking for the gap in space. Yes… no.
Will is determined to succeed. He probes again and again, without success. He cannot feel the snick which tells him that the point of the knife has engaged with the fabric of the universe.
He changes his position. Perhaps he is oriented wrongly, or the energies which have blasted the air around the Stones have distorted the underlying structure of space.
He moves, again, and again. He tries, with increasing desperation, to cut a window to Lyra's world. And as he fails, again and again, a terrible suspicion creeps over him, crawling into his consciousness like a reptile. Something – or someone – is obstructing him.
'Kirjava! Is this you?' A dark shape appears nearby.
Will, I have told you repeatedly that what you are trying to do is wrong. If you would only stop and think, you would see it too.
'Are you stopping me from using the Knife?'
I must stop you. I know what these people are like. Kirjava tells Will everything that she has learned, in The Grove and elsewhere.
Henry Latrom… he is not a good man. He runs an evil trade, in people, and in the things that destroy people's bodies and their souls.
'Kirjava, listen to me. You've got to. The angels got it wrong. Can't you see that? They left all these people stuck in the wrong worlds. Lots of innocent people are going to die if we don't help them.'
You… we… made a promise. That promise was absolute. It wasn't a promise we could take back just because it didn't suit us to keep it any more. We would stay in our own world. We would not waste our lives looking for windows to Lyra's world. We would break the Knife, because using it causes great harm. And, in return, Xaphania promised us that we could, if we really tried as hard as we could, learn to use the angels' way of travel between the worlds; by imagination.
'Oh, that!'
Yes, that. We haven't tried it, have we?
'It's all bollocks.'
How do you know? You've never tried it. And you won't, not while you still have the Knife. That is what it's done to you. And to me, too.
'So you won't let me use it.'
No, I won't, because I know what would happen if I did. You might say that you were only using the Knife to help people, and you might even believe it yourself, for a while. It wouldn't stop there – I know it. So do you.
Will looks around himself in despair. He is tempted to throw the Knife away, as far as possible, but then he glances at it again, and it is so deadly and so beautiful that he knows that he cannot bear ever to be parted from it.
He walks slowly back to the Mercedes, where Henry and Lizzie are waiting for him. He opens the back door.
'It's no good. I can't use it. My daemon won't let me. I made a promise, you see.'
In the Mercedes
Will slumps into the back seat of the Mercedes and looks out of the window, unable to face Lizzie or Henry. Lizzie gasps 'Your daemon?'
'Her name is Kirjava. She's cat-formed.' Kirjava reveals herself at last to Lizzie, who realises now that she has seen her before, in the shadows, out of the corner of her eye. She clutches her serpent-daemon, Parander.
'I see.' Henry is grey-faced. This is what he had feared – that the boy might have lost the ability to use the Knife. Will's motivation was never in doubt, of course, but the revelation that he has a fully-formed daemon who is acting against them is a grievous blow. The mongoose-daemon Tiki climbs from Henry's coat pocket and wraps herself around his neck. She feels very light; as light as a feather, you might say. He knows that his death is very close to him now, and the loss of all that he has achieved.
Henry has one card left to play. He turns round in the front seat of the Mercedes and addresses Will, Lizzie, Kirjava and Parander with a dying man's intensity.
'Elizabeth, I'm going to tell you something now that my brother Charles, had he lived, would have told you on your twenty-first birthday. It's a very private thing, but I want Will and Kirjava to hear it too. You will understand why, I'm sure.' Henry is gasping for breath, and Lizzie silently hands him two more tablets from the brown bottle.
'As you know, my brother adopted you, from an orphanage…'
'Are you going to tell me who my real parents were? Are you telling me this now because we're going to die soon?' Lizzie is wild-eyed.
'Yes, I am. And no, I do not think that we are going to die. Please don't interrupt me again.
'It is true that you were adopted from an orphanage. However, you were never a resident of that orphanage. You were there for half-an-hour only, for legal and practical reasons. Such arrangements are not uncommon. You entered the orphanage by the back door, and left by the front door shortly afterwards.
'Perhaps you can guess what I am going to tell you? As you know, my brother, Charles Latrom, never married. When he was in his late thirties he met a woman – an adventuress – and conducted a liaison with her. Perhaps he meant it to be a brief fling, perhaps not. The woman expected – and gained – great personal advantage from the affaire. But; there was a child, born out of wedlock. The only way that he could claim the child as his own, and avoid social censure, was to adopt her, which he did by the expedient I have already described. That child, of course, was you.'
'So – he was my real father all the time!'
'Can you doubt it?'
'No.' Lizzie is flushed with excitement. ' No, he was a good father to me. He never told me everything about himself, but I never asked. I wish I'd talked to him more… But what about my mother?'
'As I say, she was an adventuress. She was ambitious and intent on personal advancement, and she achieved it, too. She was very intelligent, and very beautiful, and Charles could not get her out of his system. She used him shamelessly, for she was a woman of, let us say, flexible morality and entirely without scruples.'
Henry, like many successful men, has absolutely no sense of irony.
'She was married a few years later, to an unexceptional man, but she also had another affaire with an influential figure in the King's Party, and had a child by him. One day the two men met, and there was a fight, and one of them was killed.
'It's strange – she was just as unable to resist her new lover as poor Charles was to resist her. In the end, she killed Charles, I'm sure, and she may well have killed her lover too. No one knows, for both she and Lord Asriel disappeared without trace two years ago.'
Will has been following Henry Latrom's account with fierce concentration. The implications of what Henry has been saying are hammering at his brain. He looks again at Lizzie's face, with new insight. How could he not have known? How could he not have realised?
'Kirjava! Now what do you say?'
There is a long pause, while time hangs suspended. Then Kirjava speaks, and this time they can all hear her voice.
'Lizzie's mother was the woman Marisa Coulter. Lizzie is Lyra's half-sister.
'Will, use the Knife. For Lyra's and Pantalaimon's sake, I will not prevent it.'
Henry falls back against the seat, exhausted, dying. Greaves, who has sat impassively through all that has happened – the perfect servant – reaches across the car to support him. Lizzie, only partially understanding what has happened and dazed by the impact of her new knowledge, stares open-mouthed at Will and Kirjava.
Will opens the door and steps out of the car. He holds the knife with new confidence. His consciousness flows smoothly along its glittering silver blade and concentrates itself at the point. This time, Kirjava and he are working in unison. This time, they will not fail. He reaches forward to cut a window to Lyra's world.
And nothing happens.