Table Of ContentTHE 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
