The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman Read Free Book Online Page B

she took some flat bread sweetened with honey and walked the three-hour journey along the trail to Cho-Lung-Se, where there was a monastery. By wheedling and patience, and by bribing the porter with some of the honey bread, she managed to gain an audience with the great healer Pagdzin
tulku,
who had cured an outbreak of the white fever only the year before, and who was immensely wise.
    Ama entered the great man’s cell, bowing very low and offering her remaining honey bread with all the humility she could muster. The monk’s bat dæmon swooped and darted around her, frightening her own dæmon, Kulang, who crept into her hair to hide, but Ama tried to remain still and silent until Pagdzin
tulku
spoke.
    “Yes, child? Be quick, be quick,” he said, his long gray beard wagging with every word.
    In the dimness the beard and his brilliant eyes were most of what she could see of him. His dæmon settled on the beam above him, hanging still at last, so she said, “Please, Pagdzin
tulku,
I want to gain wisdom. I would like to know how to make spells and enchantments. Can you teach me?”
    “No,” he said.
    She was expecting that. “Well, could you tell me just one remedy?” she asked humbly.
    “Maybe. But I won’t tell you what it is. I can give you the medicine, not tell you the secret.”
    “All right, thank you, that is a great blessing,” she said, bowing several times.
    “What is the disease, and who has it?” the old man said.
    “It’s a sleeping sickness,” Ama explained. “It’s come upon the son of my father’s cousin.”
    She was being extra clever, she knew, changing the sex of the sufferer, just in case the healer had heard of the woman in the cave.
    “And how old is this boy?”
    “Three years older than me, Pagdzin
tulku,
” she guessed, “so he is twelve years old. He sleeps and sleeps and can’t wake up.”
    “Why haven’t his parents come to me? Why did they send you?”
    “Because they live far on the other side of my village and they are very poor, Pagdzin
tulku
. I only heard of my kinsman’s illness yesterday and I came at once to seek your advice.”
    “I should see the patient and examine him thoroughly, and inquire into the positions of the planets at the hour when he fell asleep. These things can’t be done in a hurry.”
    “Is there no medicine you can give me to take back?”
    The bat dæmon fell off her beam and fluttered blackly aside before she hit the floor, darting silently across the room again and again, too quickly for Ama to follow; but the bright eyes of the healer saw exactly where she went, and when she had hung once more upside down on her beam and folded her dark wings around herself, the old man got up and moved around from shelf to shelf and jar to jar and box to box, here tapping out a spoonful of powder, there adding a pinch of herbs, in the order in which the dæmon had visited them.
    He tipped all the ingredients into a mortar and ground them up together, muttering a spell as he did so. Then he tapped the pestle on the ringing edge of the mortar, dislodging the final grains, and took a brush and ink and wrote some characters on a sheet of paper. When the ink had dried, he tipped all the powder onto the inscription and folded the paper swiftly into a little square package.
    “Let them brush this powder into the nostrils of the sleeping child a little at a time as he breathes in,” he told her, “and he will wake up. It has to be done with great caution. Too much at once and he will choke. Use the softest of brushes.”
    “Thank you, Pagdzin
tulku,
” said Ama, taking the package and placing it in the pocket of her innermost shirt. “I wish I had another honey bread to give you.”
    “One is enough,” said the healer. “Now go, and next time you come, tell me the whole truth, not part of it.”
    The girl was abashed, and bowed very low to hide her confusion. She hoped she hadn’t given too much away.
     
    Next evening she hurried to the valley as