AN: Two things. One: sorry for the long wait on this update, but it simply couldn't be helped. Two: if you don't already know this, there is now a trailer for this fanfic up on youtube. Anyone interested in seeing it can link to it from my profile. Now, without any further ado, here's chapter seven of "Alethiometrist's Silver".
"I still don't see why I couldn't drive," said Peter, his tone somewhere between frustrated and sullen. "It is my father's car, after all."
"Shut up, Pevensie." Lord Asriel spoke without even taking his eyes off of the road.
"I bet he's going to drive us right over a cliff," Maugrim commented darkly.
"We're in a car with a man who once tried to kill me and also happens not to have a driving permit," Susan grumbled, her expression more or less identical to Maugrim's current snarling lip-curl as she folded her arms across her chest. "We're all going to end up in prison." She scowled at the back of her husband's head. "This is against the law, knowingly enabling someone without a permit to operate a vehicle; you do know that, Peter, don't you?"
"We're doomed," whimpered Pantalaimon, his slim white body draped across Lyra's shoulders. "Susan's right, we're all going to prison."
"Hush, Pan." Lyra twisted her neck to give her dæmon a scathing glance. "Won't you ever learn to be less of a coward?"
"If you ask me," said Peter, twisting his own neck backwards from the passenger seat to speak to Lyra, choosing to ignore Susan for the moment, knowing she was in rather a plaguey mood (though not without understandable reason), "a little less courage wouldn't kill you, Lyra. Pan is the only thing that keeps you from charging everywhere at once with a sword strapped to your hip, challenging anyone who gets in your way to a duel."
"By the way, Pevensie's wife," said Lord Asriel, his eyes finally tearing away from the road before them, in a gruff, half-patronizing, half-'oh do shut it' sort of voice, "I wouldn't worry about prison in this world. A silly, empty-headed, useless woman like yourself, wouldn't survive a minute under the Ruling Power's torture…worry about that."
"I was not addressing you," scoffed Susan. Maugrim bared his teeth and growled at Stelmaria, who did not even grace his anger with so much as a passing glance.
"That does it," said Peter, "I've had quite enough. I'm not letting someone who bribes his way into my home and then insults my wife right in front of me drive my father's car."
"There's nowhere to pull over," Lord Asriel lied unflinchingly.
"What about them miles and miles of countryside we're passing?" Lyra retorted, sticking up for Peter and Susan, while still secretly admiring her father's certainty and unwavering ways maybe just a little bit.
"Don't be insolent, Lyra, or we'll leave you here."
"We'll do nothing of the kind," Peter assured her, gritting his teeth.
Lyra shrugged her shoulders, ignoring Pantalaimon's slight tremble. She wasn't the least bit worried about getting left behind anywhere. Even if she was, sooner or later someone would have to remember that she was the only one with an alethiometer; and there was a good chance that they would need it.
After much debate back and forth, they'd finally all agreed-some with more grousing than others-that it might be a good idea to go and see the Professor. It had, Peter especially remembered, been the professor's wardrobe that had first taken Lucy and Reepicheep (and himself) into that other world what felt like lifetimes ago. Also, it was 'Uncle Kirke' who had entrusted the silver alethiometer into Lucy's keeping. And, if nothing else, Professor Kirke had a dæmon, being one of the people who'd brought baby Lucy from that world to the Pevensies' household; he was as likely as anyone to have ideas about interworld travel.
Susan had, at realizing this, grumbled that if they were going to seek help from 'Uncle Kirke' then there was no reason they needed Lord Asriel, too. Peter disagreed, and so had Lyra, which irked her to no end. Now they were, against her better judgment, driving out to that great college in the middle of nowhere with Lord Asriel in the driver's seat. Yes, this was getting out of hand-and it had only just begun! Who knew what madness Asriel would lead them into? This had better be worth it, she thought despairingly, doubting that it would be.
"You don't even know which way we're going!" Peter snapped at Lord Asriel, his temper more than a little lost by this point. "We're probably lost."
"I knew all along," Susan here remarked in a faux-demure, short huff, her eyelids lowered in a superior manner, "that we really ought to have taken a train."
"Then you really should have said something at the time." Peter suddenly turned on her, despite the fact that most of his current (and past, too, when he really thought about it) anger toward Lord Asriel was on account of the way the heartless, end-justifies-the-means, nobleman treated her.
"You never listen to us," said Maugrim, his voice still having the ring of 'growling' to it. "Maybe we were tired of wasting our breath."
"That's right," Susan muttered, nodding at her dæmon.
Peter's light eyebrows came close together and his mouth opened automatically.
Before he could say something he was going to regret, however, there was a wrenching sound from the seat next to Susan's; and Lyra was holding her stomach, Pan's eyes looking dazed and glassy.
A bad stench reached Peter and Lord Asriel's noses at the same time and they winced. Stelmaria, from the middle space between the driver and passenger's seats, where she had spent most of the ride, let out a deep, cat-like groan.
Peter's sympathetic nature won out his saying anything about his father's likely reaction to vomit being all over the upholstery of the vehicle. He made Lord Asriel pull over, not taking any excuses this time.
"How is it that she doesn't get sick on a Gyptian boat or in Marisa's Zeppelin, but she suddenly takes ill at the least convenient moment?" Lord Asriel said this mostly to himself, and of course Stelmaria, but everybody else heard him anyway.
It was true that Lyra didn't suffer much from sea-sickness and that she had a knack for solid, unblemished traveling as a general rule, but that hardly made the situation at hand her fault.
Oddly, it was Susan who was most unpleasantly effected by the thoughtless comment, rather than Lyra. Lyra, getting out of the car to stretch her legs and to vomit-if she still needed to, since most of it was all over the back of the passenger seat-didn't process or mediate much on the coldness of Lord Asriel's words. Susan, on the other hand, did. It wasn't so much what he said about Lyra as it was how coolly he just mentioned her dead mother. 'Marisa's Zeppelin', just like that; nothing more, nothing less. For someone who was supposedly in love with the late Mrs. Coulter, he sure didn't act like it. For someone torn up over her death which had largely been his fault, his way of saying her name was callous.
Thinking logically, Susan figured she was over-tired and was simply reading too much into it. Anyway, even if there had been a time when she'd loved her mother, even if she owed her life to her mother since the golden monkey dæmon's end was Maugrim's salvation, that was all in the past. She was Susan Pevensie now. And, truly, there had never been a moment-not even when she was upset with Peter for different reasons-she had been sorry about that or so much as vaguely regretted what she'd given up to be with him. And Marisa Coulter was dead, her sins and cruelties a thing of the past, atoned for by death. Lord Asriel, though, was still alive; she could still hate him, and this tasteless remark seemed like yet another reason for doing so.
When Lyra was feeling better, and Lord Asriel was-very reluctantly-seated in the passenger seat, Peter taking the wheel, they all started off again.
The smell of vomit was still potent, so they all kept their mouths shut. Both Stelmaria and Maugrim crouched low in the car, each having a paw over their noses.
Finally they all arrived at a place that looked familiar and Peter stopped the car in front of a lush campus guarded by two gleaming brass boar-hound statues stationed in front of an iron gate.
Maugrim stood nose-to-nose with one of the boar-hounds until Susan grabbed him by the back of the neck, reminding him that they had to mind their business and that the hounds were clearly fake, besides. The wolf-dæmon yawned, making no reply except to follow his mistress.
It was funny, Peter thought, taking in the look of the place after so much time (for him) had passed. When he'd first shown up there as a frightened, fourteen year old boy who's father was in the war and who's little sister needed to be protected from goodness-knew-what, the college had been over-powering and breath-taking. There was still an almost magical element about it, along with a strange, unexpected homey feeling as well, but things weren't the same at Uncle Kirke's college now that he was older. It wasn't that the place had changed, he knew, seeing that every single vine of twinkling ivy seemed just as he remembered it; it was he who had changed. Peter had been through so much since he'd last been there.
In all this time, since returning to the world he was born into, he hadn't come back to the Professor's college. He had a university in the city to attend, for one. And, for another, he was just plain busy with life and family. He had written to Digory, of course, to tell him about the various things that had happened, but as for coming to visit the man face-to-face, this would be the first time in years.
A woman with her graying hair in a neat bun on the top of her head met them at the gate. She was an imposing lady, her no-nonsense face creased with an unfading frown, but Peter knew she didn't mean any harm…probably. Her name was Mrs. Macready, and she was the professor's long-time housekeeper. She was diligent, which had likely been the reason she'd never been threatened with the sack, and she kept any rift-raft at bay. The only real strike against her was that hound-like face and that permanently stern expression etched upon it so disagreeably it made the statues look friendly and inviting, even beautiful, by comparison.
"Mrs. Macready!" exclaimed Peter with a slightly put-on grin. "Remember me?"
She sighed heavily as if he'd caused her endless troubles, although they had actually said very little to each other during his brief stay with her employer.
"You must be here to see the Professor," she said in a flat monotone. "Who are all these others?" She motioned at Susan, Lord Asriel, and Lyra. Also, she frowned at Stelmaria, not liking the idea of a big wild animal roaming around the hallways, mucking up the carpets she had spent the morning vacuuming. Maugrim didn't escape her notice, but for some reason she disliked him a little less than the leopard. Perhaps she thought he was a dog; she'd always been-secretly-rather fond of dogs, as long as they were well-trained and minded their manners.
"Thank you, Mrs. Macready," a voice from behind her said. "I'll take it from here."
They stood still and waited for the white-haired man in the ruffled suit to come a little closer. He did, but at his own pace.
Then, "Well, well! Peter Pevensie! Helen's boy. It's been a while." He opened the iron fence and shook his hand heartily. "I'll have you know I was deeply disappointed when you went to university in the city. If you wanted education, well, you only had to ask."
Peter went a little red in the face. "I didn't want to be a bother, Sir." He motioned over towards Susan. "And I have a wife and child to think about."
"So you mentioned in your letters," Professor Kirke noted. Smiling at Susan, he said, "And I'm pleased to meet you, of course. His letters describing you did not do you justice."
"Oh, really?" Susan arched a brow at Peter.
Peter squirmed uncomfortably. "Let me know when 'pick on Peter' time is over, all right?" he muttered to his feet.
"So where's the little boy?" At least five of the letters the professor had gotten mentioned Christian.
"At home," said Susan, "with his grandparents." Where it's safe, she added to herself.
Maugrim barked, noticing the little robin that sat on Professor Kirke's right shoulder. The bird-dæmon winked down at him.
Peter then remembered Lord Asriel, Lyra, and the reason for their visit. This was not a social call; there wasn't much more time for mindless chit-chat or catching up, something had to be done-or at least discussed.
"Sir," he began, clearing his throat, "this is-"
"I know who he is," the professor interrupted, looking to the visitor. "You go about your duty the wrong way, and you offend reason with your justifications. Nevertheless, if it's really answers you want, then I'll gladly assist you-if only for the sake of the destruction of the Ruling Powers-but if it's only to scoff, or condemn; or if you're planning something…something…unconventional, we'll say, then there is nothing more to be said between us."
"Answers!" Lord Asriel huff-chuckled indignantly. "Answers, indeed! You cower here, in this rummy hole of a world-"
"Hey now!" Peter protested, defending his world.
Lord Asriel ignored him and went on. "-instead of fighting like a man."
"Asriel," said Digory in a soft, unfazed voice, "I think you know perfectly well that I am where I was needed the most. Someone had to look over your daughter-Sarah's daughter-and it certainly wasn't going to be you, now was it? You never flinched when Farder Coram, myself, and the others were reported to have left with your dead wife's child. No, before you speak, let me finish." He held up his palm. "I decided long ago, Lord Asriel, to believe that it wasn't heartlessness, however much of it you have often displayed, that caused your reaction to us taking her; I believe that it really was your final gift to Lady Sarah, letting Lucy go. Also, I believe that you knew she needed to be protected and that while Jordan College could suffice for Lyra, it wasn't the place for Lucy-not at the time, anyway. You were not the one who betrayed her, though you betrayed many others, including your wife, so any feelings I may have towards you-be they of distain or not-are moot. I want to help, I've made that clear. What the Ruling Powers are doing is wrong. But, and listen carefully, I want give my assistance in the right way, not causing suffering to the innocent."
"The right way." A bitter chuckle came from Lord Asriel, a similar sarcasm-laced growl forming in Stelmaria's throat. "What right way? Has there ever been any situation with high stakes like these where no one has gotten hurt? You live life in a fairy-tale if you believe that, Digory."
Any other housekeeper would have been gazing on at them, eavesdropping, listening in amazement, wondering what on earth they were all talking about; Mrs. Macready, though, had long ago mastered the ability of shutting her ears to 'master's talk', and she waited as uncomprehendingly as the boar statues for orders.
"Set the table for tea, Mrs. Macready," the professor sighed at last. "I will entertain my guests inside; there are matters for us to discuss."
So they all went through the iron gates and followed the professor into the college's main building.
Peter noticed that there was an old sound missing; he couldn't hear the fountain trickling distantly as he had when he had come there with Lucy before. He asked the professor about it.
"Oh, well, yes, the fountain has been shut down for an unspecified amount of time." He coughed into a handkerchief he pulled out from his pocket.
"Don't it work anymore?" Lyra asked; she had never been there before, nor had she known anything about a fountain, but she was curious all the same. Pan's ears twitched forward.
"I think it does," said Professor Kirke. "I do think so. It's just…something, er, odd…has been going on with it these last couple of weeks, and it's spooking some of the students."
"What do you mean by odd?" Peter wanted to know, getting rather an eerie feeling. Something in the professor's tone when he said 'odd' wasn't quite right; it almost sounded as if 'odd' was a substitute word for the term 'other worldly'.
"I'll explain that later," he promised. "For now, we'll all go to tea and talk about what's happened and what we must do."
Tea was served in one of the private retiring rooms. This was especially an honour for Lyra, as, growing up at Jordan, most retiring rooms used by the professors and masters and advanced scholars had been off-limits to her. Her views of them had been all on the sly, however extensive they were-thanks to her daring nature. Lord Asriel felt it was only his due; he had always been important in places of learning and had dined in several regal retiring rooms during his life. Susan had the sensation of going back in time, recalling both her short stay at Jordan after marrying Peter and her previous wealthy life with her noblewoman mother. It was surreal to be surrounded by so many fine things (polished peach-wood table in the shape of an oval, richly-coloured walls, tapestries of blood-red and scarlet) after all that had happened.
But if it was an almost dream-like experience for her, it was even more so for Peter. The retiring room was full of ghosts from his past. Memories of Lucy, of the look on the Lord Professor's face when he realized that he had been one of the men who'd brought Lucy to his parents' house in the first place eight years before, of hope and of despair.
It was very ironic, Peter thought, how everything had come round full circle in the end; Lucy was once again in another world, some place where he couldn't protect her, and he was once again determined to get to her and keep her safe.
After everyone had sat down and had a good tuck-in of cream-puffs, butter cookies, garlic bread, and some sort of white-and-gold sugar-topped cake with cherries, all washed down with tea (coffee for Lord Asriel, Professor Kirke, and Lyra), Peter explained why he and Susan thought something was amiss in that other world.
Professor Kirke listened, smoking his pipe thoughtfully. Then, when Peter had finished his account, he said, "And you haven't seen Dust since that morning at the window?"
"No," he replied.
"I did," Lyra admited, lifting Pan up onto the side of the table where he balanced silkily on the corner without getting in anybody's way. "Back when me and Pan was in the ruined subway-that was the last time."
"I see."
"So, what knowledge have you of potential portals in this world?" said Lord Asriel, cutting right to the chase.
"Not much at the moment," he told them, glancing over at his robin-dæmon perched in the rafters above their heads. "The links between this world and others-especially the one we need to reach-have gotten fewer."
"I thought," said Peter, a little shakily, "of writing to you about...about perhaps examining the wardrobe that first took Lucy and Reep back to their birth world; but I remembered a letter you'd sent me almost a year ago about us not expecting any more interaction by that door."
"I'm afraid it's true." The professor took a deep breath and puffed even more heavily on his pipe after re-filling it with tobacco from the silver-apple-holder the housekeeper had brought to him upon his orders a few moments before. "I thought, for a while, that perhaps there might still be a link there…I'm quite certain now, though, that there isn't one any longer. Not in that world, leading through our wardrobe and back to this college; and not in this world, leading into their realm."
"Then you don't have any leads?" Susan looked rather despairing. "At all?" A faint whimper came from Maugrim under the table.
"No, my dear, it's not so bad as that." The professor smiled at her, reaching over and patting her hand reassuringly. "Remember what I said about the fountain?"
She nodded. Peter's eyes widened. Lyra nearly spat out the sip from the second cup of coffee she was in the process of inhaling. Lord Asriel blinked condescendingly, but his intense interest was not hidden by this cool, at ease, reaction.
"I suspect it has recently become a portal somehow, but only when it's filled with water. Otherwise, it's just an empty fountain. And even when it does have water, it's not always a portal. This is only my suspicion, you understand."
"Your suspicions might not be of use to us," Lord Asriel said dryly.
"Then by all means, Asriel," said Professor Kirke, his eyebrows raised, a sardonic ring in his calm, old voice, "if you would rather go to the Northern Lights in this world and see if you can make a door in them…after all it worked so well the last time…" He snapped his eyes from Lord Asriel to Susan.
Pacified for the moment, Lord Asriel, his glare hardened, continued listening to the rest of what the professor had to say in silence.
"I don't know that we have sufficient energy to take us through, or where we would get it from." The robin-dæmon flew down from the rafters and landed on her human's shoulder as he finished speaking.
Lord Asriel looked over at Susan. "You're sure that boy of yours…what's his name?" He paused, trying to remember. "Tristan? No, wait, Christian. That's right, Christian. You're sure he was born without any signs of having a dæmon? No chance of his ever-"
But Lord Asriel was not to finish his sentence because Susan shot up, flinging her chair backwards, looking like she was going to kill him. "How dare you?" she began heatedly. "How dar-"
Without a word, Mrs. Macready picked up the chair and put it back in place. Peter gripped Susan's elbow and pulled her down into it. "Susan, please."
"Did you hear what he-"
"Yes, Su, I did. But it's all nonsense; we both know he doesn't have a dæmon. Christian is perfectly safe, I swear." He rubbed the side of her arm consolingly.
Susan's cheeks flushed as she realized how close she'd come to making a scene, but she didn't feel a bit sorry for it on Asriel's account, only on account of her own potential embarrassment.
"And, Lord Asriel," Peter said warningly; "that's enough."
Stelmaria bared her teeth and Peter remembered what it felt like to have those teeth sinking into his neck, and cringed. He was starting to regret having allowed himself to involve Lord Asriel in this. Maybe Susan was right, maybe they didn't need him, maybe they should have just gone to the professor on their own. It was too late now. Besides, so long as they could keep everyone civil, and Lord Asriel in line, they might just manage. This was for Edmund and Lucy after all. Nothing was too strenuous for them, nothing. Not even dealing with this strong-willed nobleman.
"Bre-ah-hem!" The professor loudly clearing his throat broke the awkward silence and the conversation was continued in relative peace, despite the over-all tension that still hung over everybody.
That night, in one of the spare rooms Professor Kirke had loaned them the use of, Peter could tell Susan was not really asleep. Maugrim was tossing and turning at the foot of the bed, his ears flicking back and forth at the slightest sound; and Susan's eyes were scrunched up too tightly for her to actually be comfortable enough for sleep to claim her.
"Su…" Peter hardly knew what else to say, but still attempted to comfort her, reaching across the bed and slipping his arm around her waist.
She smiled faintly and scooted backwards, leaning closer to him. Maugrim, while still fidgety, seemed a little more at ease-at least, his ears flattened and his breathing grew less heavy.
"You're scared?" said Peter, after a few moments of lying there in silence, holding her.
Susan sighed. "Yes. Anyone would be; a person who isn't is probably a fool."
"Lord Asriel doesn't seem afraid."
"Hmm, I rest my case." Susan's lips curled into a grimace before settling back down.
"Amen," muttered Maugrim, snorting.
"Christian is safe, you know."
"I know, I just…" she rolled over in his grasp so that they were facing each other, their foreheads touching. "…I can't help reacting like that. When Lord Asriel so much as mentions him-even in passing-I feel like he's slapped me across the face. It's a mother thing, I suppose. Otherwise there's nothing logical about it, and that isn't like me."
"I understand," Peter told her. "I don't trust him either, and there's nothing I like less then hearing him speak about Christian lightly. Especially considering that he almost killed both of you before the poor boy was even born. We were all traumatized by the intercisions. To be honest, I think Lyra got it the worst of everybody; she just hides it well."
"Why do you say that?"
"Well, think about it," he said slowly, "first she finds out that she's not an orphan after believing all her life that she was one, that the man she thought to be her uncle was really her father, and the woman who took her from Jordan College on false hopes and pretences was her mother. Then, she finds Roger, her best friend, cut away from his dæmon, only to witness his inevitable death shortly afterwards. At least we still have each other, to get through all this, but who does she have?"
Feeling cold all of a sudden, Susan shivered. What must it be like, she wondered brokenly, to have nothing? Nothing other than your dæmon for trustworthy company. Not even a lover, a husband, to hold and comfort you in the middle of the night. She rolled back over, facing away from Peter, though his arm was still around her, and closed her eyes.
In another room, Lyra rested with her elbows propped against the open window, Pantalaimon sitting on the sill. She couldn't sleep and she was too tired to work the alethiometer at the moment, however many questions she had. Besides, some of those questions weren't the sort the alethiometer was meant to answer, she figured. Most of them were lonely questions.
Why were there streams of silly tears leaking out of her eyes without reason? Why was Pan so quiet and pensive, not wanting to speak to her (nor she to him)? Why after all this time was she still thinking about Roger? And why, with no warning, was it that she suddenly couldn't stop thinking about him? And missing him, terribly.
AN: Pleaseth reviewth