The Amber Spyglass (Page 136)

The word love set his nerves ablaze. All his body thrilled with it, and he answered her in the same words, kissing her hot face over and over again, drinking in with adoration the scent of her body and her warm, honey-fragrant hair and her sweet, moist mouth that tasted of the little red fruit.

Around them there was nothing but silence, as if all the world were holding its breath.

Balthamos was terrified.

He moved up the stream and away from the wood, holding the scratching, stinging, biting insect dæmon, and trying to conceal himself as much as he could from the man who was stumbling after them.

He mustn’t let him catch up. He knew that Father Gomez would kill him in a moment. An angel of his rank was no match for a man, even if that angel was strong and healthy, and Balthamos was neither of those; besides which, he was crippled by grief over Baruch and shame at having deserted Will before. He no longer even had the strength to fly.

“Stop, stop,” said Father Gomez. “Please keep still. I can’t see you—let’s talk, please—don’t hurt my dæmon, I beg you—”

In fact, the dæmon was hurting Balthamos. The angel could see the little green thing dimly through the backs of his clasped hands, and she was sinking her powerful jaws again and again into his palms. If he opened his hands just for a moment, she would be gone. Balthamos kept them closed.

“This way,” he said, “follow me. Come away from the wood. I want to talk to you, and this is the wrong place.”

“But who are you? I can’t see you. Come closer—how can I tell what you are till I see you? Keep still, don’t move so quickly!”

But moving quickly was the only defense Balthamos had. Trying to ignore the stinging dæmon, he picked his way up the little gully where the stream ran, stepping from rock to rock.

Then he made a mistake: trying to look behind him, he slipped and put a foot into the water.

“Ah,” came a whisper of satisfaction as Father Gomez saw the splash.

Balthamos withdrew his foot at once and hurried on—but now a wet print appeared on the dry rocks each time he put his foot down. The priest saw it and leapt forward, and felt the brush of feathers on his hand.

He stopped in astonishment: the word angel reverberated in his mind. Balthamos seized the moment to stumble forward again, and the priest felt himself dragged after him as another brutal pang wrenched his heart.

Balthamos said over his shoulder, “A little farther, just to the top of the ridge, and we shall talk, I promise.”

“Talk here! Stop where you are, and I swear I shan’t touch you!”

The angel didn’t reply: it was too hard to concentrate. He had to split his attention three ways: behind him to avoid the man, ahead to see where he was going, and on the furious dæmon tormenting his hands.

As for the priest, his mind was working quickly. A truly dangerous opponent would have killed his dæmon at once, and ended the matter there and then; this antagonist was afraid to strike.

With that in mind he let himself stumble, and uttered little moans of pain, and pleaded once or twice for the other to stop—all the time watching closely, moving nearer, estimating how big the other was, how quickly he could move, which way he was looking.

“Please,” he said brokenly, “you don’t know how much this hurts—I can’t do you any harm—please can we stop and talk?”

He didn’t want to move out of sight of the wood. They were now at the point where the stream began, and he could see the shape of Balthamos’s feet very lightly pressing the grass. The priest had watched every inch of the way, and he was sure now where the angel was standing.

Balthamos turned around. The priest raised his eyes to the place where he thought the angel’s face would be, and saw him for the first time: just a shimmer in the air, but there was no mistaking it.

The angel wasn’t quite close enough to reach in one movement, though, and in truth the pull on his dæmon had been painful and weakening. Maybe he should take another step or two . . .

“Sit down,” said Balthamos. “Sit down where you are. Not a step closer.”

“What do you want?” said Father Gomez, not moving.

“What do I want? I want to kill you, but I haven’t got the strength.”

“But are you an angel?”

“What does it matter?”

“You might have made a mistake. We might be on the same side.”

“No, we’re not. I have been following you. I know whose side you’re on—no, no, don’t move. Stay there.”

“It’s not too late to repent. Even angels are allowed to do that. Let me hear your confession.”

“Oh, Baruch, help me!” cried Balthamos in despair, turning away.

And as he cried out, Father Gomez leapt for him. His shoulder hit the angel’s, and knocked Balthamos off balance; and in throwing out a hand to save himself, the angel let go of the insect dæmon. The beetle flew free at once, and Father Gomez felt a surge of relief and strength. In fact, it was that which killed him, to his great surprise. He hurled himself so hard at the faint form of the angel, and he expected so much more resistance than he met, that he couldn’t keep his balance. His foot slipped; his momentum carried him down toward the stream; and Balthamos, thinking of what Baruch would have done, kicked aside the priest’s hand as he flung it out for support.

Father Gomez fell hard. His head cracked against a stone, and he fell stunned with his face in the water. The cold shock woke him at once, but as he choked and feebly tried to rise, Balthamos, desperate, ignored the dæmon stinging his face and his eyes and his mouth, and used all the little weight he had to hold the man’s head down in the water, and he kept it there, and kept it there, and kept it there.