The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman Read Free Book Online

and for a clear second Serafina Pekkala became visible to everyone, and one or two of the clerics looked at her, puzzled and fearful; but then she controlled herself again, and they turned back to the torture.
    Mrs. Coulter was saying, “If you don’t answer I’ll break another finger, and then another. What do you know about the child? Tell me.”
    “All right! Please, please, no more!”
    “Answer then.”
    There came another sickening crack, and this time a flood of sobbing broke from the witch. Serafina Pekkala could hardly hold herself back. Then came these words, in a shriek:
    “No, no! I’ll tell you! I beg you, no more! The child who was to come . . . The witches knew who she was before you did . . . . We found out her name . . . . ”
    “We know her name. What name do you mean?”
    “Her true name! The name of her destiny!”
    “What is this name? Tell me!” said Mrs. Coulter.
    “No . . . no . . . ”
    “And how? Found out how?”
    “There was a test . . . . If she was able to pick out one spray of cloud-pine from many others, she would be the child who would come, and it happened at our consul’s house at Trollesund, when the child came with the gyptian men . . . . The child with the bear . . . ”
    Her voice gave out.
    Mrs. Coulter gave a little exclamation of impatience, and there came a loud slap, and a groan.
    “But what was your prophecy about this child?” Mrs. Coulter went on, and her voice was all bronze now, and ringing with passion. “And what is this name that will make her destiny clear?”
    Serafina Pekkala moved closer, even among the tight throng of men around the witch, and none of them felt her presence at their very elbows. She must end this witch’s suffering, and soon, but the strain of holding herself unseen was enormous. She trembled as she took the knife from her waist.
    The witch was sobbing. “She is the one who came before, and you have hated and feared her ever since! Well, now she has come again, and you failed to find her . . . . She was there on Svalbard—she was with Lord Asriel, and you lost her. She escaped, and she will be—”
    But before she could finish, there came an interruption.
    Through the open doorway there flew a tern, mad with terror, and it beat its wings brokenly as it crashed to the floor and struggled up and darted to the breast of the tortured witch, pressing itself against her, nuzzling, chirruping, crying, and the witch called in anguish, “Yambe-Akka! Come to me, come to me!”
    No one but Serafina Pekkala understood. Yambe-Akka was the goddess who came to a witch when she was about to die.
    And Serafina was ready. She became visible at once and stepped forward smiling happily, because Yambe-Akka was merry and lighthearted and her visits were gifts of joy. The witch saw her and turned up her tear-stained face, and Serafina bent to kiss it and slid her knife gently into the witch’s heart. The tern dæmon looked up with dim eyes and vanished.
    And now Serafina Pekkala would have to fight her way out.
    The men were still shocked, disbelieving, but Mrs. Coulter recovered her wits almost at once.
    “Seize her! Don’t let her go!” she cried, but Serafina was already at the door, with an arrow nocked in her bowstring. She swung up the bow and loosed the arrow in less than a second, and the Cardinal fell choking and kicking to the floor.
    Out, along the corridor to the stairs, turn, nock, loose, and another man fell; and already a loud jarring bell was filling the ship with its clangor.
    Up the stairs and out onto the deck. Two sailors barred her way, and she said, “Down there! The prisoner has got loose! Get help!”
    That was enough to puzzle them, and they stood undecided, which gave her time to dodge past and seize her cloud-pine from where she had hidden it behind the ventilator.
    “Shoot her!” came a cry in Mrs. Coulter’s voice from behind, and at once three rifles fired, and the bullets