Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Lost Cult

by E. E. Knight

  Leonid, at the winch, sensed his mood, retreated to one of the air shaft alcoves around the circular chamber, and lit a cigar.

  The leader of the cult of the Méne needed to pace.

  The Prime checked his watch. It would be getting dark up on the surface. Another hour, and the cursed arthropods would be up and hunting again.

  A variety of mutated creatures in this isolated stretch of Andean cloud forest had claimed the Abyss as their own.

  Ironic that a variant of the Sacred Vine had so altered some of the local wildlife. He looked at a green frog that had found its way down one of the air shafts. A line of tiny eyes ran down its spine. He waved his hand over the frog: the eyes blinked, and it hopped. Frogs were like canaries in a coal mine; changes to an environment showed in them first.

  The Food Chain, a Frangible Web. A line from the title of his doctoral thesis. Deep Gods, how could it be that he had ever been interested in such trivia?

  He’d wasted years photographing tadpoles and counting toes before he had been enlightened to the true state of the world by Kunai. And now, thanks to that happy chance, he was standing in the spot where demigods had once ordered the affairs of men. At the cusp, as it were, of a new age that would come out of this ancient place.

  The roof over the Abyss was old, a low dome like an enormous stone igloo. The masonry set into the walls was unusual, interlocking triangles growing smaller and smaller until they reached the centerpoint of the dome. One would expect some sort of design or emblem there, but there was none. With the smell of gunfire gone now, even the air wafting up from the Abyss felt ancient, damp and cool.

  He wondered what sort of hands had worked the blood-colored granite millennia ago.

  The circular chamber, a forty-meter expanse of shaped red granite surrounding the gaping Abyss, looked like a movie set now. A generator clattered in the corner, over-whelming the faint jungle sounds that drifted down the shafts ringing the room. Cables snaked their way to lights set on stands and the electric winch that had been set up among the old stonework. Modern girders had been fitted where once beams had lain for Méne priests to stand upon as they chanted the ancient rites, pushing captives into the Abyss as sacrifices all the while.

  Long, long lengths of wire-cored rope ran from the winch down into the Abyss. His engineers had been through purgatory figuring breaking strengths and load weights with the makeshift gear they’d smuggled into the ruins past the Peruvians. It wasn’t the person at the end of the line that mattered so much. It was the weight of all the cable descending into darkness. The ancient stairs running their corkscrew length down and down and down had disappeared in some long-ago earthquake, and now the only way to the panels was via an arduous and treacherous descent. They only used the winch in emergencies; the sound had been known to wake up the hive.

  Though Alison had fallen short at the last jump, the Prime didn’t regret bringing her along. She’d been good company during their hunt for the location of this ancient interface. What’s more, she truly believed.

  Some of his followers chafed about money, groaned and bleated at every setback. Not Alison. Ever since he’d shared his vision with her—the bits and pieces he’d picked up from Kunai, Von Croy, the Old Man—she’d been at his side every step, arguing down the malcontents, walking first into every danger. A German shepherd couldn’t have been more loyal.

  When he’d mused aloud that they would have to put Croft out of the way through an assassination or kidnapping, she’d thrilled at the idea and kissed him. “I hope they get her alive. It’ll drive LC mad, when she finds out who did it.”

  The Prime had gone along with it. He had to admit that Alison knew which tripwires were connected to which reactions in the Croft psyche. Besides, he’d already planned to use Croft to retrieve the tablets as a contingency in case Alison couldn’t manage the job. And now, as it turned out, she couldn’t manage it. But she would still be useful in handling Croft. They’d once been close. Alison knew how to read people—except, perhaps, herself.

  And him, of course.

  Best of all, she was a superlative lover. There was a lot of spare time to fill while waiting for men and equipment and information to arrive.

  He’d actually become quite fond of her, in his way. He regretted the words he’d have to say to her now. But feelings couldn’t stand in the way of the Restoration of the Old Order.

  ***

  Alison came up the last stairs, unhooked her safety line, and sat at the edge of the Abyss, catching her breath. She’d been beaten, or frightened, and looked it. Gunpowder residue marked her cheek like a bruise; she’d taped a dressing to her forearm. Alison’s glycogen-starved muscles trembled as she unslung the shotgun from her back and set it aside.

  “They woke up,” she said. “Angry, as usual.”

  “And the panels?”

  “Couldn’t get near them. Sorry. Let me try again tomorrow. I could really use another shot of juice. Do you have—”

  “Too much isn’t good for you, my pet.” What he really should have said was that the supply gathered, at great time and expense from the atoll, was running short, but the concern he voiced was also the truth.

  “Or, better yet, just dump a drum of DDT down there.”

  “Air currents. It would come back up in our faces, even if we could get the right chemicals. Obtaining powerful nerve agents in large quantities has gotten more difficult of late. And contrary to its name, the Whispering Abyss has a bottom. I don’t want to hurt whatever might be down there.”

  “Then six men with shotguns—”

  “After we lost Kurt and Yassim and Rafael? You want to ask for the next group of volunteers? No, going in noisy just aggravates them. Defense of the nest, I suppose.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  “I’m the Prime. It’s time for me to act for the good of the Méne Restoration. We’ll get your old friend to retrieve them.”

  Alison bit her lower lip. “Bugger Lara. I can—”

  “No. I don’t want you down there again. You forget, I’ve got a stake in your well being, too.”

  “Don't coddle me.”

  “Don’t dispute my decisions.”

  He and Alison were both teeth grinders. Their jaws worked as they stared at each other, until Leonid put his cigar out at the center of one of the equilateral triangles and tapped his watch.

  “We’re both overwrought,” the Prime said. “We need to leave before they come up. We’ll talk about it once we’re safe in the hut.”

  She fed shells into the shotgun. “I’ll stay. I’ll blast them as they come up. Whittle down the numbers.”

  The Prime took out the old monocle, looked at Alison through its distorting lens.

  “Alison, look at me.”

  The shells went in schuck schuck schuck…

  “Alison!”

  She looked up, met his eyes through the lens. The red plastic of the shell with its metal cap dropped, rolled into one of the grooves in the floor.

  The Prime began to spin the lens on its handle. It glittered, catching the generator-powered lights. “Alison, relax.”

  “Relax,” she agreed.

  “Let’s talk about it in safety. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Now follow me. I’ve never played you false, or for a fool, have I?”

  She followed. “Never.”

  8

  Lara Croft had her research spread out on her aunt’s old craft table in what had once been an aviary attached to the mansion. Brown leather-bound tomes opened to unevenly typeset pages alongside a modern microfilm reader covered the waist-high worktable’s butcher-block surface. Two plates containing the remnants of quick baked-beans-on-toast meals stood nearby. A samovar next to tea things on a little table in the corner steamed away.

  The glass-enclosed annex to the house had the advantage of being farthest from the telephone and the front door. It held happy memories, along with a variety of plants and small trees. Her grandfath
er had built it to indulge a passion for exotic birds. She liked the space of her aunt’s huge worktable, the bank of fluorescent lights over the table for nighttime, and the variety of places to put her feet on the stool or the table rail.

  Lara tended to fidget as she learned. Her muscles had to tap out each new fact.

  During her aunt’s time, all the birds but one had been donated to a local zoo, and the glass enclosure had been turned into a greenhouse. The remaining bird was an African gray parrot, a favorite of her grandfather’s. Named Sir Garnet, he was older than Winston and just as much a fixture of the Croft estate as the butler. Sir Garnet enjoyed screaming matches with the local crows and tormented the cats from neighboring estates by running back and forth at the base of the glass wall as they stood outside watching helplessly.

  As Lara read into the night, taking notes on her laptop, Sir Garnet caught her mood and ascended to the top of the tallest tree in the greenhouse, a sweet acacia, and went to work trimming twigs. If she was going to work, so was he. She ignored the snaps and snicks, accompanied by an occasional satisfied cackle when a twig full of tiny sets of neatly paired compound leaves fell to the floor. In another six weeks the tree would erupt in yellow-orange blossoms. Her aunt used to collect and dry the petals to put into sachets for the dressers and wardrobes.

  She’d kept up the tradition. Her clothes still smelled faintly of honeysuckle in the spring.

  Lara refilled her tea from the samovar. It was a thank-you gift from the Russian government after she’d cleaned house in Murmansk in pursuit of the Spear of Destiny. Michelov and his pet admiral…

  Shivering from the cold.

  She brought herself back to the microfilm reader and waited for the tea to kick in. Lara rubbed her eyes, opened the next book. She’d ordered volumes from libraries in Beijing to Buenos Aires, Sydney to Oslo, in an effort to duplicate Von Croy and Frys’s original research.

  It was heavy going. She was on her fourth cup of black lifeboat tea.

  Winston’s familiar shuffle sounded behind her.

  “Will there be anything else, miss?”

  He clung to his formalities like the balding parrot above clung to his acacia branch.

  “You don’t have to ask permission to retire, Winston,” Sir Garnet called from the ceiling. In her voice.

  “You don’t have to ask permission to retire, Winston,” she repeated.

  She had told Winston this every night since coming into her inheritance, but to Winston formalities were as much a part of the Croft estate as the old bricks from the days of King James. It was part of his code not to drop the ritual, just as it was her code not to treat employees as inferiors. “Good God, it’s eleven thirty. Don’t bother with breakfast in the morning.”

  “One small matter, miss. Have you looked at your phone messages?”

  She’d called Borg first thing upon returning, after having decided that the key to Alison’s whereabouts was in Von Croy and Frys’s old research. Her shadowy attackers needed something buried in the work the partners did decades ago. Borg had been eager to go right to Buenos Aires and pick up the trail, but she’d demurred. They didn’t know enough yet.

  By reading the references listed in their paper, perhaps she could piece together what Ajay was after. Lara had also been trying to reach Frys’s only remaining family, a forty-five-year-old son who was, as it happened, a professor in his own right at Dublin University … though he wasn’t an archaeologist like his dad. His field was biology. But Lara still wanted to talk with him. He might have memories of his father’s earlier work.

  “Anything important?”

  “That journalist. Heather Rourke. She’s called twice today.”

  Lara groaned. “I don’t have time for interviews and photo shoots. As I’ve told her at least twice.”

  “She came to the door uninvited while you were in the Indian Ocean last week. Cheeky.”

  “I admire her determination. You’ve got a withering stare. Then again, steady drops hollow the stone.”

  “You remember your Goethe. Your tutor would be pleased.”

  “Herr Baltz would rather I’d said Steter trapfen holt den stein. Is she being a nuisance? I could speak to her.”

  “Have you hollowed?”

  “No.” She stretched. “I redirect the drip.”

  She returned to her books, driving herself to put in a few more hours.

  The whole Méne business was like a fog, a fog where unsheathed stilettos waited in determined hands.

  What she was learning from her global collection of books and microfilm copies wasn’t making her feel any easier. Usually she slept long and soundly when home in England, but lately her dreams had been invaded. Falling … drowning, always in suffocating darkness. She’d awake and hurry to the nearest window to look for the sun.

  She glanced into the glass wall of the aviary. Thanks to her dark jumper, a trick of the light made her face and arms appear to float against the night outside. It was like looking at one’s own ghost.

  “Don’t wear yourself out, miss,” Winston said. His voice was soft and soothing when he chose to make it so, very like her grandfather’s.

  “Good night, Winston,” Sir Garnet called. He was used to that exchange as well.

  There were smiles in the glances they exchanged. If she couldn’t have her parents, Winston was the next best thing. Her father’s traditional conservativism and her mother’s unstinting—but unvoiced—affection existed in that creaking old frame … without the qualities that had divided her from her parents.

  Lara listened to the shuffling steps, promising herself that after her next trip she’d send Winston to Jamaica for a fortnight. Winston loved Ian Fleming novels. She’d put him up at the Fleming House at Goldeneye, where he could watch sun-bronzed girls run back and forth on the beach all day.

  With a guilty pang she realized she’d promised herself that before her last trip. And probably the one before that, too.

  She returned to the microfilm reader, turned the knob to advance a page: “So the Méne hold the number three holy…”

  Now, why would Kunai, a botanist who’d published papers on the medicinal value of rain forest blossoms and tubers, along with more lucrative coffee table books of exotic blossoms, become interested in a dead cult?

  ***

  Lara Croft awoke to the sound of a rosewood tray landing atop her research.

  Sir Garnet gave an outraged squawk. He’d been asleep, too.

  “Breakfast, miss.”

  She blearily took in Winston’s morning coat. The inviting smells of eggs, fried potatoes, hot buttered toast, fresh jam, and sausages made her open her eyes. A neatly creased paper sat beneath the tray.

  There were disadvantages to being too used to sleeping rough. She’d set her head down at 4 A.M. atop Von Junst’s Unaussprichliche Kulten and nodded off. She felt a twinge in her trapezius muscles as she straightened.

  You are not aging, Croft. It’s just that you took no exercise yesterday.

  “Sausages, Winston? I told you not to bother getting up to cook.”

  “They’re fresh from the market. They were coming with eggs and milk this morning anyway—”

  “Give them to your dogs.”

  “Only after you’ve had two bites.”

  Tempted to tell him what he could bite, Lara held her tongue. Winston would absorb a fit of morning crankiness with the same dignified aplomb as he would a knighthood.

  She hated being babied. Winston knew it, but did it anyway, with the same obstinacy that made him ask to be allowed to retire, or iron the London Times, or perform any of the little duties that she didn’t give a toss about. Unless, of course, she was sick. The last time she’d been seriously ill, as opposed to just wounded, was twelve years ago. But still. She remembered how much she’d appreciated his attentiveness to all the small details of her comfort then, and sighed.

  Swallowing two tiny bites of sausage, she watched him fill Sir Garnet’s feed bowl, knowing she was bei
ng watched in turn. The taste of the sausage awoke her appetite, and by the time Winston had finished with the damp rag used to mop up Sir Garnet’s droppings, she had finished the sausages and poached eggs—the centers were perfectly gelled, Winston being the twenty-four-carat treasure that he was—and was starting in on the fried potatoes and toast.

  Having seen to her stomach, Winston shuffled out of the aviary.

  Her mood rose with her blood sugar. Feeling mischievous enough to upset Winston’s morning routine, Lara picked up the aviary’s hose. As she turned the tap and washed the buttery smear from the toast from her fingers, she decided that hearty breakfasts, a reliable postal service, and parliamentary democracy were England’s three great gifts to the world. Probably in that exact order.

  She glanced at the morning paper as she absently turned the hose on the nearby plants and Sir Garnet, who shook and turned on his perch under the gentle rain, clucking contentedly. She was considering a swim to work the kinks out when she heard the gate bell.

  Sir Garnet ceased preening and fluttered to a higher branch so he could look down the lane for a visitor.

  “Courier for you, miss,” Sir Garnet announced, recognizing the white and red of the express delivery van.

  Lara wasn’t about to make Winston walk the length of Croft Manor with whatever was being delivered, especially not after her recent delivery to Urdmann. She wouldn’t put it past him to pay her back in her own coin—or a deadlier one. Worried now, she replaced the hose and hurried through the aviary, into the house, and to the massive timber door of the front entrance.

  Winston was already signing for the delivery. How had the old man moved so fast? She sometimes suspected him of having a twin, or of secret passages in Croft Manor known only to the staff and handed down from servant to servant like Masonic passwords.

  “South America, miss,” he said and handed her the letter-sized packet.

  “Professor Alex Frys,” she read. Mind and body were both wide awake now. “So my letter did get through.”

  She took it into her home office, a small converted sitting room, woke her computer, entered her desktop password—“Boxgrove,” the dig where as a child on a school trip she’d found her first artifact, a flint edge—and opened her file on Alex Frys. It contained a copy of the letters she’d sent, one to the care of his father’s attorney in Scotland and the other to his university address in Dublin. She’d also made a note that an e-mail sent to the university had received an “out of the country” auto reply. She turned on her scanner.