Lara Croft and the Blade of Gwynnever Read online

  “Move that,” she said, nodding at the tube, and Denny lifted it off the table, making room for Florence to put the sword down. Then she began carefully removing the several layers of packing material until the sword was exposed.

  It was exactly as Lara remembered it, exactly as it had been when she had wielded it in her dream. She stared so intently at it for so long that she had to blink hard.

  In that blink she saw the woods again. She was sitting, watching her bear with its soft brown eyes. When she opened her eyes, the soft brown eyes didn’t belong to a bear, but to a man, and she was not sitting in the woods, but standing in a great hall, the space dominated by a vast circular table. The brown-eyed man smiled at her, and left her side to join other men milling around the space, greeting one another, their breastplates clanging together as they embraced like brothers.

  She let her hand rest on the hilt of her own sword, hanging at her waist, and blinked again.

  “Are you all right, Lara? You look pale.”

  Lara turned to look at Carter, and then back down at the sword that Florence was now holding in her hands.

  “This terrible lighting’s enough to make anyone look pale,” Lara said. She swallowed hard.

  “It looks like it was made yesterday,” said Florence.

  “It wasn’t,” said Lara.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” said Florence. “If I trust anyone, it’s you, Lara.”

  “The feeling isn’t mutual,” said Lara.

  Florence made a mocking “meow” sound.

  “Now, now, ladies,” said Denny. “Let’s not have any pit-fighting...not that I wouldn’t enjoy watching you two brawling.” He laughed one of his belly laughs, and it echoed around the chamber, bringing one of Florence’s lackeys scurrying in from the passage.

  Florence turned her right hand around the grip of the sword, dropped her left hand from supporting the weight of the blade, and lunged, throwing her left arm out for balance. The lackey did not see the attack coming. The blade pierced his torso just below his sternum. It entered his body without resistance, and he seemed to crumple around it. There was no sound, and almost no blood, and then the body simply slid off the blade and onto the floor of the chamber.

  Lara had her gun drawn and pointed at Florence as the sword entered the guard’s body.

  “It’s perfect,” said Florence, straightening up. “No effort. It found its own target. Look,” she said, holding the blade up for them all to see, “not a drop of blood on the blade.”

  Everyone but Lara simply stared.

  “That’s how you test the merchandise?” asked Denny. For once, his voice had lost its weight.

  “You’re utterly detestable, aren’t you?” said Lara. She didn’t holster her gun again, not while Florence was armed with the sword.

  “It’s as if it was made for me,” said Florence.

  “I think you underestimate your skill with weapons,” said Lara. “How long have you been training for, Florence?”

  “I will be the next great warrior queen,” said Florence. “It is my fate.”

  “So you were right, Lara,” said Carter.

  “You predicted this?” asked Florence.

  “You’re too filled with a sense of your own importance, Florence,” said Lara. “I merely suggested that you might look for female role models. I recognised your pathology. I knew you’d identify with legendary women.”

  “Not just women,” said Florence. “Warrior queens, great leaders. A golden civilisation that outlived every patriarchy, a global culture of Matriarchs. You’ve heard about them, Lara. You just haven’t seen the connections.”

  “Nefertiti, Boudicca, Elizabeth,” said Lara.

  “And Guinevere,” said Florence. Lara could hear from the way Race said the name that she favoured the Victorian modernisation.

  Denny coughed.

  “I’m all for the sisterhood, but I can’t stand around here listening to girl talk, and we haven’t completed our transaction, Miss Race.”

  Florence transferred the sword to her left hand, and took her smartphone out of her breast pocket. She keyed into it for a few seconds.

  “There,” she said. “The transaction is complete. I’ll have to—”

  Denny’s phone sounded with the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and he checked his messages.

  “Indeed it is,” he said. “Thank you, Miss Race. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”

  He looked at the corpse of the lackey curled up on the chamber floor.

  “For me, at least,” he added.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

  The Sword

  Nefertiti’s Tomb

  “You can go, Mr. Sampson,” said Florence, “you and your sidekick. And you, too.”

  Florence nodded at Carter, then looked at Lara.

  “But you, Lara, you’re special, you’re one of us. Stay with me, Lara. I have a place for you.”

  “A place with you?” asked Lara. “I’m my own boss. I don’t work for anyone, and I still have you at the end of my gun.”

  “This isn’t work, Lara. This is life, a purpose.”

  “You’re not making a lot of sense, Florence.”

  “Go,” said Florence, waving a hand at Denny and Carter, as if shooing them away. “I want to talk to Lara. This is none of your concern.”

  “I’ll go when Lara tells me to,” said Carter.

  Florence flexed her grip on the sword, and the blade twitched in response.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Florence, put that down,” said Lara, “and stop being so melodramatic. It doesn’t suit you. Carter and Denny, stay. It’s a long drive back to Cairo across the desert in the dark, and a convoy’s the safest way to do it. Nobody’s going anywhere.”

  Florence hesitated for a moment. She gazed into Lara’s eyes, and Lara gazed back, her expression unflinching. Florence adjusted her belt and then fed the sword through it. She was not going to let it go. Then she quickly sorted through the notes on the table, collecting some of them together in her arms, along with a couple of the books.

  “Right now, I plan to take a tour of the tomb, and you and the sword are coming with me,” said Lara. “I don’t trust you, Flo, and I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “Then we go alone,” said Florence. “I want you to see something. Guards!” she called. Two guards appeared from the adjacent room, and three more from the passage. “Hold these men.”

  “Carter, you’re in charge,” said Lara. Carter drew his gun in a standoff with the guards.

  Florence tutted.

  “Because this isn’t uncomfortable, at all,” said Denny.

  Lara shrugged at Denny.

  “After you, Florence,” she said, and the two women walked into the burial chamber. The air was cool, almost clammy, though Lara knew there was no moisture in it. The echoes of their footsteps and movement seemed soft, as if they had been swaddled.

  The chamber was exactly as Lara remembered it, apart from a tarpaulin that covered the north wall. Lara could see, in her mind’s eye, the famous murals covering the wall, of Tutankhamen journeying into the afterlife and being greeted by Osiris. The wall was divided into three story sections, which were remarkably complete and extraordinarily beautiful.

  As Florence drew back the tarpaulin, Lara braced herself to see the murals. The sight always took your breath away.

  There was nothing there. The wall had gone.

  “What have you done?” gasped Lara. “This is desecration!”

  “You’re wrong, Lara!” Florence bit back. She threw a switch on a cable hanging from the ceiling, and the black hole where the mural had once been was lit up to show a cavity. Another room. A new room.

  “Oh my God...” Lara murmured, staring.

  “Tut was nothing, a no one,” said Flo
rence. “Men have worshipped a useless, sickly boy for a hundred years, and all the time there were women who knew more, women who knew better. There have been women who knew better for three thousand years, Lara. Women like us.”

  Lara had taken two steps forwards, but hesitated at the opening.

  “Go in,” said Florence.

  “After you,” said Lara. “I like to know where you are.”

  Florence smiled at Lara and stepped through the hole in the wall.

  “Come into my parlour,” she said.

  Lara could not believe her eyes.

  The room was bigger than Tutankhamen’s burial chamber. It was larger, squarer, and twice as high. Every surface was richly, ornately painted, much more crisply and precisely than Tut’s burial chamber. Nefertiti’s image was repeated over and over again, and every time her likeness appeared, she was wearing the pharaoh’s headpiece.

  The pharaoh’s headpiece, Lara thought.

  Lara checked to make sure she was right, scanning the walls, top to bottom and side to side. In every image, Nefertiti was not wearing the flattened, black headgear of the consort, but the vast, blue-domed crown of the pharaoh. She was depicted bathed in the rays of the Sun God and even ascended into its great golden orb.

  There were hieroglyphics, too, and cartouches dotted around the room. Lara couldn’t read them, as they would need a great deal of scholarly study to decipher accurately, but they, too, were clean and complete, and clearly told the stories of Nefertiti’s life’s work.

  Lara noted the guards stationed around the room, but knew they were no threat to her while she had her gun trained on their mistress. Her attention turned to the grave goods and burial paraphernalia that lined the walls and covered much of the floor. Everything from the grandest statues to the smallest jars were gilded and painted. They were absolutely staggering and, unlike Tutankhamen’s chamber, where everything had been famously found piled up and haphazard, as if stacked in a hurry at the last moment, this material was perfectly arranged.

  It was a recreation of a royal chamber, laid out with ritual precision, exactly as it would have been in a palace in life. This was how pharaonic burial ceremonies were supposed to work. Like stage sets, like necropolis echoes of real life. The queen’s home, perfectly recreated in the tomb for her use in the afterlife, containing everything she could possibly need.

  Lara crouched down in wonder to study an ornate gold casket. She suddenly stood up again.

  “Beautiful,” she said. “But this is just the anteroom. Where’s the burial chamber? I want to see the sarcophagus.”

  “Yes, Lara,” said Florence, “this is only the beginning. You’re in for a real treat. Even you won’t believe how magnificent it is!” Florence laughed, an odd, tinkling sound. “Follow me.”

  Lara had not seen the opening in the far wall, beyond the piles of grave goods.

  Nefertiti’s sarcophagus stood in a dedicated burial chamber. The walls of the room were covered in gold, lined with blue the colour of the pharaoh’s crown, and inscribed with the Aten’s sun-ray symbol. It was beautiful, simple, elegant. The shrine, too, was blue and gold. It stood at the foot of the sarcophagus and was bigger and more ornate than King Tut’s shrine.

  There was an eternal silence that was almost penetrating.

  The shrine was decorated with more symbols of the Aten, and with the likeness of Nefertiti, but there were none of the usual pantheon of gods of protection.

  “This is monotheistic,” whispered Lara.

  “Always,” said Florence. “The Matriarchy, one god, one universal culture, always and everywhere.”

  The blue canopic jars that sat on top of the shrine within an ornate gilded gallery had lids carved in the shape of Nefertiti’s bust, complete with the pharaoh’s crown.

  “So she was pharaoh,” said Lara.

  “She was more than that,” said Florence.

  “Who knows about this?” asked Lara.

  “Those whose right it is to know,” said Florence. “Those who need to know. I know, and you know.”

  “And your lackeys know,” said Lara, gesturing at the men guarding the room.

  “They can be silenced,” said Florence. “There’s more, Lara. Let me show you the rest.”

  Lara wanted to touch the sarcophagus as she walked its length. She hadn’t even had a chance to examine it, but she’d come for Florence and the sword.

  The treasury chamber, situated at one end of the burial chamber, came as the biggest shock to Lara. She stood absolutely still, rooted to the spot as soon as she was through the portal. It was the first time she and Florence had been alone since entering the chambers. There were no guards stationed in the room.

  “Yes, let’s stop for a moment,” said Florence. “I want you to look at some of this.” She stood close to Lara and started to riffle through the notes that she had brought with her.

  “It’s the same,” said Lara, half her attention constantly on Florence Race. “It’s almost exactly the same.” She gathered herself, and walked around the room, the duplicate of the cyst chamber under Candle Lane. The dimensions of the room were the same. The obelisk stood in the same position, with the altar in front of it. The inscriptions on the vast stone pieces looked almost identical to those on the obelisk and altar in the sister chamber, although this was local Egyptian stone, not British. It was also gilded.

  Lara ran a finger along the groove in the altar stone. The sword was missing. Everything was so complete, so perfect, so pristine, but the sword now hanging from Florence’s belt had been nestled in the altar under Candle Lane. This altar should have its own sword, surely. There was nothing.

  “What did you do with the sword, Florence?”

  Florence looked up at Lara, and then at her hand resting in the groove on the altar.

  “There is but one sword remaining,” said Florence. “I need only one. There is only one culture, one Matriarchy, one warrior queen who flourishes in different eras, in different civilisations across the world. With one great cause.”

  “Your cause?” asked Lara.

  “Our cause,” said Florence.

  Lara laughed.

  “You and I have nothing in common.”

  “They sought you out, and they found me,” said Florence. “I saw who they were. I saw women in need of a new queen. It is time, you see? At first, they employed me to find the artefact, to acquire it for them. I thought there might be a shortcut.”

  She got up and walked to a finds crate nearby. She opened the lid and took something out.

  “Look at this,” she said. “I thought I could make a copy and use that.”

  She was unwrapping another sword. It was a fine piece, the sort of thing an expert craftsman would make if he’d only been given a description and had never actually seen the original.

  Florence held it up. The modern copy glinted under the harsh light of industrial bulbs.

  “I used every detail I could gather,” she said. “Measurements, dimensions of the altar groove, every scrap of knowledge about the original sword. I used a local craftsman and sourced obsidian from the right part of the world. I thought I could make an accurate surrogate, then charge it by performing the same rituals.”

  “Add a vital modern component to an ancient intricate mechanism?” said Lara.

  Florence nodded.

  “Exactly. Like replacing the broken mainspring in an otherwise intact antique timepiece. But it was hard work, and there were no guarantees the replica would suffice. Then I learned what Strand had brought out of the London site.”

  She tossed the sword copy back into its crate disdainfully.

  “I didn’t need the surrogate anymore. I could use the real thing.”

  Race paused and looked at Lara for a moment.

  “I started out doing what they wanted, doing their research and acquisition
for them, until I saw the beauty and sense of it. They are not worthy. They are soft and weak. They are liberal. They think they can rule the world with love and compassion and understanding. They will be my velvet glove, but they need me. I am the iron fist at their centre.”

  “You’re kidding me,” said Lara.

  “I want you at my side, Lara. You’re one of the strongest women I know. You’re clever and ruthless and independent. You know how to get what you want. We need women like you. You will be my lieutenant.”

  “Like I said, I don’t work for anyone,” said Lara. “And this site is too important, not just the tomb of the Pharaoh Nefertiti, but the connection to the second site under London.”

  “Seven sites,” said Florence. “There are seven sites, seven great ages of the Matriarchy. Seven is the number of perfection, completeness, effectiveness. There are seven obelisks, seven altars. This is the number of women, the number of the continents, the number of life.”

  Lara gazed at Florence in amazement.

  “Where are you getting this stuff from?” she asked.

  Florence waved her sheaf of notes at Lara.

  “It’s all here.”

  Lara bent, took the notes from Florence’s hands, and began to skim them.

  “Gwynnever’s sword is the last in existence,” said Florence. This time, Lara could hear her form the name in its old, true form. There was no one around except Lara to hear her, no glib show to put on. “I had to bring it here, to the home of the first, the greatest queen. I have to perform the ritual... I have to perform it with you.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN:

  THE RITUAL

  The Treasury Cyst

  All seven sites were there, listed in the notes that Florence had given her: the Andean coast of Peru, the Okanagan Desert in Canada, the Nullarbor Plain in Australia, London, the Valley of the Kings, Lizhou in China...