His Dark Materials 01 - The Golden Compass Read Online Free PDF Page A

honorary degree? He wants a daemon! Find a way to give him a daemon, and he'd do anything for you."
    The Scholars laughed heartily.
    Lyra was following this with puzzlement; what the Palmerian Professor said made no sense at all. Besides, she was impatient to hear more about scalping and the Northern Lights and that mysterious Dust. But she was disappointed, for Lord Asriel had finished showing his relics and pictures, and the talk soon turned into a College wrangle about whether or not they should give him some money to fit out another expedition. Back and forth the arguments ranged, and Lyra felt her eyes closing. Soon she was fast asleep, with Pantalaimon curled around her neck in his favorite sleeping form as an ermine.
     
    She woke up with a start when someone shook her shoulder.
    "Quiet," said her uncle. The wardrobe door was open, and he was crouched there against the light. "They've all gone, but there are still some servants around. Go to your bedroom now, and take care that you say nothing about this."
    "Did they vote to give you the money?" she said sleepily.
    "Yes."
    "What's Dust?" she said, struggling to stand up after having been cramped for so long.
    "Nothing to do with you."
    "It is to do with me," she said. "If you wanted me to be a spy in the wardrobe, you ought to tell me what I'm spying about. Can I see the man's head?"
    Pantalaimon's white ermine fur bristled: she felt it tickling her neck. Lord Asriel laughed shortly.
    "Don't be disgusting," he said, and began to pack his slides and specimen box. "Did you watch the Master?"
    "Yes, and he looked for the wine before he did anything else."
    "Good. But I've scotched him for now. Do as you're told and go to bed."
    "But where are you going?"
    "Back to the North. I'm leaving in ten minutes."
    "Can I come?"
    He stopped what he was doing, and looked at her as if for the first time. His daemon turned her great tawny leopard eyes on her too, and under the concentrated gaze of both of them, Lyra blushed. But she gazed back fiercely.
    "Your place is here," said her uncle finally.
    "But why? Why is my place here? Why can't I come to the North with you? I want to see the Northern Lights and bears and icebergs and everything. I want to know about Dust. And that city in the air. Is it another world?"
    "You're not coming, child. Put it out of your head; the times are too dangerous. Do as you're told and go to bed, and if you're a good girl, I'll bring you back a walrus tusk with some Eskimo carving on it. Don't argue anymore or I shall be angry."
    And his daemon growled with a deep savage rumble that made Lyra suddenly aware of what it would be like to have teeth meeting in her throat.
    She compressed her lips and frowned hard at her uncle. He was pumping the air from the vacuum flask, and took no notice; it was as if he'd already forgotten her. Without a word, but with lips tight and eyes narrowed, the girl and her daemon left and went to bed.
     
    ----
     
    The Master and the Librarian were old friends and allies, and it was their habit, after a difficult episode, to take a glass of brantwijn and console each other. So after they'd seen Lord Asriel away, they strolled to the Master's lodging and settled in his study with the curtains drawn and the fire refreshed, their daemons in their familiar places on knee or shoulder, and prepared to think through what had just happened.
    "Do you really believe he knew about the wine?" said the Librarian.
    "Of course he did. I have no idea how, but he knew, and he spilled the decanter himself. Of course he did."
    "Forgive me, Master, but I can't help being relieved. I was never happy about the idea of..."
    "Of poisoning him?"
    "Yes. Of murder."
    "Hardly anyone would be happy at that idea, Charles. The question was whether doing that would be worse than the consequences of not doing it. Well, some providence has intervened, and it hasn't happened. I'm only sorry I burdened you with the knowledge of it."
    "No, no," protested the