«So, have you seen the king? lofur Raknison?»
«Yes. Oh, yes. I came here at his invitation, you know. He intended to set up a university. He was going to make me Vice-Chancellor. That would be one in the eye for the Royal Arctic Institute, eh! Eh? And that scoundrel Trelawney! Ha!»
«What happened?»
«I was betrayed by lesser men. Trelawney among them, of course. He was here, you know. On Svalbard. Spread lies and calumny about my qualifications. Calumny! Slander! Who was it discovered the final proof of the Barnard-Stokes hypothesis, eh? Eh? Yes, Santelia, that's who. Trelawney couldn't take it. Lied through his teeth. lofur Raknison had me thrown in here. I'll be out one day, you'll see. I'll be Vice-Chancellor, oh yes. Let Trelawney come to me then begging for mercy! Let the Publications Committee of the Royal Arctic Institute spurn my contributions then! Ha! I'll expose them all! «
«I expect lorek Byrnison will believe you, when he comes back,» Lyra said.
«lorek Byrnison? No good waiting for that. He'll never come back.»
«He's on his way now.»
«Then they'll kill him. He's not a bear, you see. He's an outcast. Like me. Degraded, you see. Not entitled to any of the privileges of a bear.»
«Supposing lorek Byrnison did come back, though,» Lyra said. «Supposing he challenged lofur Raknison to a fight…»
«Oh, they wouldn't allow it,» said the Professor decisively, «lofur would never lower himself to acknowledge lorek Byrnison's right to fight him. Hasn't got a right. lorek might as well be a seal now, or a walrus, not a bear. Or worse: Tartar or Skraeling. They wouldn't fight him honorably like a bear; they'd kill him with fire hurlers before he got near. Not a hope. No mercy.»
«Oh,» said Lyra, with a heavy despair in her breast. «And what about the bears' other prisoners? Do you know where they keep them?»
«Other prisoners?»
«Like.-.Lord Asriel.»
Suddenly the Professor's manner changed altogether. He cringed and shrank back against the wall, and shook his head warningly.
«Shh! Quiet! They'll hear you!» he whispered.
«Why mustn't we mention Lord Asriel?»
«Forbidden! Very dangerous! lofur Raknison will not allow him to be mentioned!»
«Why?» Lyra said, coming closer and whispering herself so as not to alarm him.
«Keeping Lord Asriel prisoner is a special charge laid on lofur by the Oblation Board,» the old man whispered back. «Mrs. Coulter herself came here to see lofur and offered him all kinds of rewards to keep Lord Asriel out of the way. I know about it, you see, because at the time I was in lofur's favor myself. I met Mrs. Coulter! Yes. Had a long conversation with her. lofur was besotted with her. Couldn't stop talking about her. Would do anything for her. If she wants Lord Asriel kept a hundred miles away, that's what will happen. Anything for Mrs. Coulter, anything. He's going to name his capital city after her, did you know that?»
«So he wouldn't let anyone go and see Lord Asriel?»
«No! Never! But he's afraid of Lord Asriel too, you know, lofur's playing a difficult game. But he's clever. He's done what they both want. He's kept Lord Asriel isolated, to please Mrs. Coulter; and he's let Lord Asriel have all the equipment he wants, to please him. Can't last, this equilibrium. Unstable. Pleasing both sides. Eh? The wave function of this situation is going to collapse quite soon. I have it on good authority.»
«Really?» said Lyra, her mind elsewhere, furiously thinking about what he'd just said.
«Yes. My daemon's tongue can taste probability, you know.»
«Yeah. Mine too. When do they feed us, Professor?»
«Feed us?»
«They must put some food in sometime, else we'd starve. And there's bones on the floor. I expect they're seal bones, aren't they?»
«Seal…I don't know. It might be.»
Lyra got up and felt her way to the door. There was no handle, naturally, and no keyhole, and it fitted so closely at top and bottom that no light showed. She pressed her ear to it, but heard nothing. Behind her the old man was muttering to himself. She heard his chain rattle as he turned over wearily and lay the other way, and presently he began to snore.
She felt her way back to the bench. Pantalaimon, tired of putting out light, had become a bat, which was all very well for him; he fluttered around squeaking quietly while Lyra sat and chewed a fingernail.
Quite suddenly, with no warning at all, she remembered what it was that she'd heard the Palmerian Professor saying in the Retiring Room all that time ago. Something had been nagging at her ever since lorek Byrnison had first mentioned lofur's name, and now it came back: what lofur Raknison wanted more than anything else, Professor Trelawney had said, was a daemon.
Of course, she hadn't understood what he meant; he'd spoken of panserbj0rne instead of using the English word, so she didn't know he was talking about bears, and she had no idea that lofur Raknison wasn't a man. And a man would have had a daemon anyway, so it hadn't made sense.
But now it was plain. Everything she'd heard about the bear-king added up: the mighty lofur Raknison wanted nothing more than to be a human being, with a daemon of his own.
And as she thought that, a plan came to her: a way of making lofur Raknison do what he would normally never have done; a way of restoring lorek Byrnison to his rightful throne; a way, finally, of getting to the place where they had put Lord Asriel, and taking him the alethiometer.
The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.
She was nearly asleep when the bolts clattered and the door opened. Light spilled in, and she was on her feet at once, with Pantalaimon hidden swiftly in her pocket.
As soon as the bear guard bent his head to lift the haunch of seal meat and throw it in, she was at his side, saying:
«Take me to lofur Raknison. You'll be in trouble if you don't. It's very urgent.»
He dropped the meat from his jaws and looked up. It wasn't easy to read bears' expressions, but he looked angry.
«It's about lorek Byrnison,» she said quickly. «I know something about him, and the king needs to know.»
«Tell me what it is, and I'll pass the message on,» said the bear.
«That wouldn't be right, not for someone else to know before the king does,» she said. «I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but you see, it's the rule that the king has to know things first.»
Perhaps he was slow-witted. At any rate, he paused, and then threw the meat into the cell before saying, «Very well. You come with me.»
He led her out into the open air, for which she was grateful. The fog had lifted and there were stars glittering above the high-walled courtyard. The guard conferred with another bear, who came to speak to her.
«You cannot see lofur Raknison when you please,» he said. «You have to wait till he wants to see you.»
«But this is urgent, what I've got to tell him,» she said. «It's about lorek Byrnison. I'm sure His Majesty would want to know it, but all the same I can't tell it to anyone else, don't you see? It wouldn't be polite. He'd be ever so cross if he knew we hadn't been polite.»
That seemed to carry some weight, or else to mystify the bear sufficiently to make him pause. Lyra was sure her interpretation of things was right: lofur Raknison was introducing so many new ways that none of the bears was certain yet how to behave, and she could exploit this uncertainty in order to get to lofur.
So that bear retreated to consult the bear above him, and before long Lyra was ushered inside the palace again, but into the state quarters this time. It was no cleaner here, and in fact the air was even harder to breathe than in the cell, because all the natural stinks had been overlaid by a heavy layer of cloying perfume. She was made to wait in a corridor, then in an anteroom, then outside a large door, while bears discussed and argued and scurried back and forth, and she had time to look around at the preposterous decoration: the walls were rich with gilt plasterwork, some of which was already peeling off or crumbling with damp, and the florid carpets were trodden with filth.