Lara Croft and the Blade of Gwynnever Read online

  Other Novels by Dan Abnett and Nik Vincent

  Dan wrote the Tomb Raider novel The Ten Thousand Immortals in 2014. His latest novel The Wield is published this year from Gollancz. His comics Aquaman, Titans, Earth 2 and Guardians of Infinity are currently available. Dan has also written the game Alien Isolation and contributed extensively to the Shadow of Mordor games.

  Nik’s latest novel Savant, written under the name Nik Abnett, is available this year from Solaris Books. Nik’s short story The Twa Corbies is available in the Out of Tune vol II anthology from JournalStone.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Lara Croft™ and the Blade of Gwynnever

  Copyright© 2016 Prima Games, a division Penguin Random House LLC.

  Published by Prima Games®

  6081 East 82nd Street, Suite 400 Indianapolis, IN 46240

  www.primagames.com

  Prima Games® is a registered trademark Penguin Random House LLC.

  Tomb Raider © Square Enix Ltd. 2016. Square Enix and the Square Enix logo are registered trademarks of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics, the Crystal Dynamics logo, Eidos, and the Eidos logo are trademarks of Square Enix Ltd.

  All rights reserved.

  eISBN: 9780744017588

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  001-286779-Sept/2016

  Dedication

  To the dort and her boyff: The three musketeers and D’Artagnon... Oh thank you very much.

  Acknowledgements

  Dan and Nik would like to thank Chris Hausermann and the team at Prima Games for their help, advice, and forbearance during the writing of this book.

  Foreword

  This year we’re celebrating 20 years of Tomb Raider. The franchise has always been about the spirit of discovery, the thrill of the unknown, and the promise of adventure. At its center is the iconic Lara Croft, and we’re incredibly pleased to feature her in a new novel as part of the celebration.

  When given the opportunity to work with Dan and Nik a second time, we jumped at the chance. Their work on Tomb Raider: The Ten Thousand Immortals demonstrated their understanding of our beloved character, and a dedication to faithfully representing Lara in novel form. We knew they possessed a desire to craft a pitch-perfect story.

  Of course, we couldn’t make things too easy. Dan and Nik were now comfortable within the modern survival-action of Tomb Raider, but when we first began the process of outlining the second novel, we knew we’d want one that celebrated the 20-year milestone. So we asked them to shift gears and deliver a nostalgic Lara Croft experience—one that would transport fans to multiple locations around the world, and was filled with high-spirited action, intrigue, and otherworldly forces. At the helm: the dual-pistol-wielding, confident Lara Croft who has a quip for every dangerous situation. Writing a novel like this would warrant a different style and tone. More importantly, it required a deep understanding of the traits that make the two versions of Lara distinct, as well as the core character qualities they share.

  The good news was that this novel imposed fewer restrictions than the previous one had, given this outing would exist as a somewhat standalone adventure. Dan and Nik didn’t have to take specific preceding events into account, nor did they need to ensure Lara ended up at a certain point. While this certainly offered creative freedom, it also meant there was far more room to potentially veer off-course. Sometimes too many options can be just as difficult as too few. However, Dan and Nik had earned our trust, and we were incredibly excited to see where they would take Lara, given the open road in front of them.

  They certainly did not disappoint.

  Dan and Nik have successfully tackled both sides of the Tomb Raider universe, the modern and the nostalgic. They’ve delivered two distinct yet equally high-quality experiences for our favorite archaeologist, first showcasing her as a relatively inexperienced young woman dealing with the aftershocks of a traumatic survival ordeal, and now as a confident, globe-trotting adventurer who greets anything the world can throw at her with a pair of blazing guns. No small feat, and a testament to the heart and effort they both poured into this new adventure.

  As always, the team at Crystal Dynamics dedicates this book to our fans around the world, many of whom have been with the Tomb Raider franchise since its debut 20 years ago. To those long-time fans, as well as our new ones, we thank you for your incredible support and passion. We hope you enjoy the adventure you’re about to embark upon with Lara Croft.

  Rich Briggs

  Brand Director, Crystal Dynamics

  PROLOGUE:

  THE HEART OF SERENDIP

  Southwestern Sri Lanka

  The ruined temple, and the rainforest gorge it stood in, were called Tapyantore. In a lost language that had been dead for fifteen hundred years, the word meant “green death.”

  Lara Croft knew with complete certainty that it was about to live up to its name.

  Four hundred metres below her flailing, free-kicking feet was the lush, mist-swathed canopy of the rainforest. The plunge into it was going to break her neck and her long bones. The branches and rope vines would rip off her limbs. Broken wood would stab and skewer her. And if she weren’t dead enough by then, the forest floor beneath the canopy would definitely finish the job.

  Above her, the 20mm-thick steel-kern, nylon-mantle climbing line was as tight as a gallows rope. Between Lara and the creeper-wrapped Tapyantore bridge—a stone pier that connected the eastern wall of the gorge to the rocky pillar of the ancient temple—stretched six metres of the taut line, and it was frayed half-through around the midpoint of that stretch. Despite the sweat in her eyes, she could see the sturdy fibres separating, one by one, under the weight of her suspended form.

  Lara’s grip was keeping her from an instant plunge into the canopy—that and a single loop that the fall had pulled as tight as a tourniquet around her left wrist. Her grip was so frantically tight it was drawing blood from her palms.

  How long did she have? A minute before the last fibres snapped? Less than that? Anyone else might consider just letting go and falling, with resigned grace, into the bosom of the jungle, his arms spread wide in acceptance. Not Lara Croft.

  For any normal archaeologist it would be a fitting death: to perish in one of the ancient, lost corners of the world that he had dedicated his life to exploring. The eternal jungle would embrace him, enfold him. It would shroud him in leaves. His body would lie, unmourned and unmarked, and quickly decompose, returning to the earth, into the great cycle, feeding the forest’s vigorous growth. Tapyantore would make him one of its secrets. Not her. Lara Croft was not just any archaeologist.

  The only response that fit Lara Croft’s character was to fight. She was never more alive than when she was faced with adversity, confronted by danger. Adrenaline was her friend, her buzz.

  Lara Croft had never let go of any lifeline, metaphorical or otherwise. She was a fighter: born, bred, and raised. The hazards of survival might overcome her one day, but she would do battle with them today. She would do battle and she would win.

  It was hot—stupidly hot—and murderously humid. The air was like soup. The sheer effort of Lara’s struggle made it hotter still. Her shirt and cargo pants were soaked with sweat and rain. The socks in her army boots felt waterlogged. Even her old leather bomber jacket seemed lank with moisture.

  Lara was breathing hard. Sweat streamed down her face and her spine. It poured d
own her arms under her sleeves. Her palms were sweating, too, burning her skin where salty sweat met the raw rope burns.

  “Sarap!” she yelled. Her voice was hoarse. “Sarap, for God’s sake!”

  Sarap appeared on the ancient stone bridge above her and peered down through the fringe of liana and honeysuckle. He was a Sinhalese adventurer, about forty-five years old. In the six days he and his two companions had spent guiding Lara through the tropical rainforests of southwestern Sri Lanka to find the Tapyantore Gorge, they had become friends.

  Or so she had believed.

  Halfway across the causeway bridge, with a sad smile and the politest of apologies, he had turned and shoved her off the edge.

  “Pull me up!” she commanded.

  He shrugged sadly.

  “So sorry,” he replied.

  “Sarap! You bastard! Pull me up!”

  There was a chance that if she were commanding enough—and Lara could be very commanding—he might just help her. On the other hand, he’d pushed her off the bridge in the first place. He had to have a motive, and a good one.

  As she had plunged, her training had kicked into gear, and old habits had saved her from instant death. They had pegged the kernmantle climbing line along the edge of the narrow, precarious stone arch. The structure was festooned with thick, wet vegetation. As Lara had crossed, she’d looped the line around her left wrist, a seasoned climber’s habit. When Sarap shoved, the loop had caught her, almost wrenching her arm out of its socket, but she’d hung on, gone with the fall, relaxed.

  She had presumed it to be just a stupid, clumsy accident. She’d shouted.

  Then, as she’d dangled from the loop of climbing rope, she’d seen Sarap tut in disappointment—and take out his piha kahetta dagger. He had leant down and patiently sawn through the super-tough line with the blade’s razor edge.

  The kernmantle line had parted with a whip crack, and Lara had lurched and fallen again, swinging out and wide under the ancient bridge like a pendulum. Only one end of the line was then secure.

  She’d seen Sarap tut again, and edge his way along to cut the other end.

  Then his smartphone had rung.

  The ringtone was the theme to some action movie, an ominous, dramatic soundtrack to her latest adventure. Hilarious.

  That damn phone. Sarap was so proud of it. He was always going on about its features and apps, forever chatting to his buddies and girlfriends as they trekked through the sunlight-slanted glades of the rainforest.

  All that time, he’d clearly been chatting with someone Lara should have known about. That was his motive.

  “Whatever they’re paying you,” Lara yelled, “it won’t seem like enough when I hand you your arse, Sarap!”

  “It’s enough,” he called back, his singsong voice floating down to her through the clammy air. “And you’ll never get out of there alive, so my arse will be fine, thank you.”

  Money always talked. Sarap liked his bling. He liked his tech. Money spoke to him, and he liked what it had to say. He was a mercenary. That’s why she’d hired him, after all.

  “Double!” Lara yelled. “I can get myself out of here and hand you your arse. Or we can do this the easy way. Give me a hand and I’ll pay you double.”

  “I honestly would like to oblige,” Sarap replied, “but I am very sure you would kill me in a rage even if I pull you up. And no cash reward is worth that, let me tell you.”

  “Double!” she snarled. The pain in her wrist, shoulder, and hands was almost unbearable. She focused on the easiest solution first. “Double, and no questions! Pull me up, and we’ll forget this misunderstanding ever happened!”

  “Misunderstanding...” Sarap echoed. “I like the word. It is conciliatory.” He was thinking about it. That put strength back into her; maybe this would be easy, after all.

  “The Heart of Serendip is very precious,” Lara called out. “I understand that people desire it very much.”

  “Indeed,” he replied.

  “Who made you the better offer, Sarap?” she called up. “Who was it?”

  Her desire to fight, her sense of justice had got the better of her. She regretted it. Rookie psychological mistake. Sarap was a mercenary, but he didn’t like that fact to be acknowledged. She’d just straight-out declared he was murdering her for financial gain. She had offended his dignity and his twisted notion of honour.

  Above her, Lara saw Sarap’s face darken in annoyance and withdraw from view.

  Dammit!

  From above, she heard him talking. Was he chatting with the other two, Putra and Bapanni? Were they horrified at his actions? That couldn’t be it. They’d be down with it. Sarap would have cut them in. They were his boys.

  No, he was on the damn phone again.

  “Hello? Hello? Yes, I... No, please say that again. I said, ‘Say that again,’ please. Reception here is very bad.”

  Silence.

  Lara reappraised the situation. The pendulum effect of her plunge was still swinging her in a lazy circle under the bridge. Okay, so she’d do it the tough way. She flexed her arms to increase that swing. She just had to swing herself close enough to the wall of the gorge, or the sheer face of the temple pillar. She just had to time the swing to leap clear... Then she just had to land well enough to grab a handhold...

  Three variables: the arc of the swing, timing, and the landing. It was down to her body and the math. Okay.

  She swung, pumping her arms and bicycling her legs as though she were in some nightmare spin class. She gained some momentum, increasing the arc of the swing.

  She heard the ringtone. The heroic anthem of that damned movie.

  “Hello? Yes, we were cut off. Yes, well, that is the situation. I see. Well, I should think three times that. Yes. Good, then. Goodbye.”

  Sarap reappeared. He smiled down at her.

  “Terribly sorry,” he said. “They raised their offer.”

  He reached down with his piha kahetta and began to saw through the line.

  Swinging hard, Lara said, “Well, once a mercenary bastard, always a mercenary bastard.” She wasn’t going to let him break her concentration. He might have heard her. She didn’t know and she cared even less.

  Sarap hadn’t been offended. He’d used her offer to leverage a better fee. Fine, she still had the option of handing him his arse.

  “Your turn of phrase is not very polite,” he told her, sawing away urgently. “I would have expected better manners from a finely educated lady of good breeding like you.”

  So, he had heard her.

  “You think my words aren’t polite, wait till you meet my fists!” she said. She was swinging wide, but was still a long way from either the gorge wall or the face of the pillar.

  But the action of Sarap sawing was actually helping. It was pushing at the line and amplifying the arc.

  The creeper-swathed rock face of the temple pillar loomed in front of her, but she was falling away from it again before she could reach out and find a handhold, swinging across the deep gorge. The gorge wall was coming closer now. Lara reached out her right hand, stretched, grabbed, and came away with nothing but a handful of torn leaves and tendrils.

  Sarap was nearly through the line. Lara could feel it giving way. The sheer face of the temple rock rushed towards her. No choices. No waiting for a better opportunity.

  The blade sawed through the line. The line cut like a pistol shot.

  Lara threw herself clear, arms and legs wide, reaching, stretching, grabbing...

  She hit the rock face with stunning force.

  The air was punched out of her. She had slammed into the thick cover of creepers and hanging moss. She was blind. Sap and fibres filled her snarling mouth. She was sliding, slithering, falling. She grabbed, kicked, scraped, clung. Vines tore, branches snapped, leaves ripped. Disturbed insects billowed around
her.

  Her eyes scanned, and she threw out an arm.

  She stopped falling.

  She blinked, shook her head, spat out bits of leaf and mould. Her legs were swinging free over the drop. She’d slid about ten metres down through the rock-face overgrowth. She’d managed to snag her right arm in the crook of a tough creeper trunk and hooked it there, arresting her fall. The lashing, severed line had done the rest, tangling in an obstruction some metres above her.

  The whole vertical mass of vegetation creaked and stirred. Lara knew it could tear away from the rock at any moment. She moved, gingerly. She found footholds and took some of the weight off her arms. The line had yanked so tight around her left wrist, her hand was numb. Flies and bugs buzzed around her. Something crawled across her cheek and she twitched it off.

  Lara began to haul herself upwards, one foot, one hand at a time, testing every branch and ledge for stability. She heard voices from the bridge. Had Sarap and the others seen her improvised salvation? She couldn’t tell. Maybe they’d heard the splintering crash of vegetation and presumed it was her swan dive into the canopy.

  She couldn’t tell, and she didn’t care.

  Lara climbed.

  The Temple of Tapyantore was a third-century ruin of the Karasagor culture. There was no trace of it except in the most esoteric books. The Karasagor had been so secretive, almost every scrap of their culture and legacy had been lost to history. The temple was red basalt, carved out of the top of an eerie rock pillar one thousand metres high and six hundred metres broad. The pillar rose from the floor of the Tapyantore Gorge, an eighteen-mile-long canyon choked with rainforest, and the canyon sides rose to even greater heights above the walls of the temple precinct. Water vapour fogged the throat of the gorge. The air was full of birdsong and the percussion of a trillion insects. Every move Lara made was accompanied by the rustle of foliage, the snap of twigs, and the sound of loose clods of dirt and stone tumbling away down the precipice under her.

  It was going to take hours to climb to the lip of the temple wall. Lara knew that her limbs would not last that long. There was nowhere to rest, nowhere to stop that didn’t involve being in tension and clinging on. Nothing would stop her attempting the ascent.