The Cradle of Life (5 page)

They needed to be very careful indeed.

She climbed carefully off her sled, and set foot on the cave bottom. Coral crunched beneath her feet. A step away, the temple floor proper began.

Lara stepped forward, and set a foot down lightly on one of the broken tiles.

It sank into the ground.

One of the columns on the wall to her right began sinking, as well.

Above them, the ceiling creaked ominously.

Lara withdrew her foot, and frowned. Jimmy cursed under his breath.

“Damn,” Nicholas said. “What do we do?”

Lara looked at the floor again. About six feet straight ahead of her, there was a series of unbroken tiles.

She took a deep breath, and swung her arms. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth—

She crouched, and jumped, landing square on one of the unbroken tiles.

The columns stayed as they were. The ceiling didn't creak.

She reached into her pack and pulled out a handful of nylon bags. Turned, and tossed them back to Jimmy and Nicholas.

“Fill these,” she told them. “And stay off the broken tiles.”

Lara was interested in the treasure, of course—she kept a close eye on what Nicholas and Jimmy were filling the bags with. Caught sight of what looked like a primitive abacus, and made note of which bag that went in. Saw something that looked like a sextant, and made a mental note of that, as well. Some spectactular necklaces that looked Egyptian, a crown in the shape of—of course—an eight-pointed star, and a scabbard encrusted with more diamonds than she'd seen in quite a long, long time—all of those piqued her interest.

But as they'd approached the treasure, her primary focus had shifted to the wall behind it, and the mural that ran the length of that wall. The colors had long ago faded, and parts of it showed signs of serious water damage, but nonetheless, as she drew close, she knew that she was looking at something quite spectacular indeed. A few seconds of up-close study confirmed her intuition.

She switched on the new digicam Bryce had prepared for her, the one affixed to her mask, and began recording.

What she saw was an illustration of Alexander's journey across Europe and Asia—his triumphal march across the known world, laid out in pictures. The images were reminiscent of something—a memory that tugged briefly at her consciousness, and then flitted away.

No matter—it would come to her again. She returned her attention to the glyphs on the wall.

There was a young Alexander fighting with his father, Philip, while Philip was still king—and here, the newly crowned Alexander, leading the destruction at Thebes. A few panels down, there was the cutting of the Gordian knot. Then, the triumphal procession into Egypt, the sacking of Persepolis, the death of Darius, and the long march across Persia. Here, his marriage to Roxanne, and here, the launching of his final campaign, the journey into India, and here was his army—

Lara frowned.

Here was his army, in a scene she didn't recognize at all.

Soldiers lay strewn by the score across a battlefield. Dead, obviously, but not from fighting—they looked untouched by any weapon.

“I could get used to this tomb raiding,” Nicholas said, interrupting her train of thought. “Lara—what do you say to two handsome Greek partners?”

“I'll be gentle,” she replied, giving him a brief smile before returning her attention to the battlefield scene. The more she studied it, the less sense it made. No weapons were drawn, the men had fallen in formation as if struck by lightning—

Here was something—a soldier off to the side of the battle, holding a small box in his arms. A treasure chest of some kind, perhaps? Something they had died defending?

It still made no sense. Was this a battle that history had failed, for one reason or another, to record? A defeat for the legendary Alexander the Great? The glyphs on the wall were arranged chronologically—which, looking on either side of the battlefield scene, put this between his first conquests in India, and his death in Babylon.

Right about the time, she realized, that Alexander had stopped his march eastward, and turned for home.

Lara had always been puzzled by that decision. According to the history books, the army, tired of fighting, tired of marching, had simply refused to go any farther. Alexander's initial response to those complaints had been to tell those who wished to turn back to do so—that he would proceed with his auxiliaries.

That's what she would have done—by herself, if she'd had to. One of the reasons why she'd always felt such a kinship for Alexander—his unshakable determination to push the envelope, to fulfill his destiny—to dream the spectacular, and then to live it. Not for him an ordinary life—nor for her.

(Which put her in mind, for just a split second, of the other men she'd allowed to share her life—Alex West, Tobias Grayson, Terry Sheridan, even—all of them had that same thirst for adventure.)

So why had Alexander changed his mind?

Because that was what he had done, just a few days after the declaration that he would continue, he'd turned his back on his most cherished dream, of finishing his eastward exposition in the Bay of Bengal—what he believed to be the Eastern Ocean, and the veritable edge of the world.

Why?

Did it have something to do with the scene before her? A disaster history hadn't recorded? One that necessitated his sudden about-face?

She zoomed in on the battlefield scene, let the camera linger on it a moment.

“Bad day…” she murmured, frowning.

There were other symbols underneath the glyphs, she saw now, barely visible even this close up. They looked like writing—but she didn't recognize the language. Odd. Lara was familiar with virtually all the Hellenic dialects.

Time enough to puzzle it out later, she thought, and recorded the new symbols, as well.

Then she turned away from the illustration to the statue in front of it, the seated Alexander. It was not a particularly noteworthy sculpture, she decided—and no wonder, since whoever the artist had been had to work from memory, as Alexander himself had been half a continent away. There was something off about the figure, and she couldn't quite put her finger on what. The mouth, perhaps, was just a little too angular—or was it the nose that was angular? In any case, the eyes…

The eyes. Lara stepped closer, and saw that one of them was covered by something. A medallion.

She stepped closer, reached up, and removed it from the eye socket.

The medallion was copper, turned dark with age. Lara had to hold it close to see that there was an image on one side.

A seated figure, playing a musical instrument.

Details were hard to make out in the semidarkness. More light might help, she thought, reaching for the flash on her belt.

It slipped from her grasp, and struck the temple floor.

The impact switched it on, and a beam of light shot straight up into the semidarkness. All at once, the temple was showered in a kaleidoscope of reflected light.

Lara looked up, and saw that the beam of light had struck something hanging from the ceiling. A cage of iron, suspended in the air by narrow horizontal bars, resting on a formation that seemed totally out of place in the temple—a black cone-shaped rock.

And within the cage, the source of the multicolored rays that flooded the interior of the temple—a shining, black Orb.

“Hey!” That was Nicholas. “How did you know that was up there?”

“I'm a professional,” Lara said, without a trace of humor. She set down her guns, most of her gear, and the medallion.

“So what is it?” Jimmy asked, as the brothers picked their way carefully across the temple floor to where Lara stood.

“I haven't a clue,” Lara admitted. “But I'm damn sure going to find out.”

She looked up at the Orb, and the cage, and the bars. Frowned at the statue, at the sloping walls of the temple, and then up at the Orb again.

“Come on,” she told Nicholas and Jimmy. “I need a boost.”

They helped Lara up onto the statue. She perched on Alexander's hand for a second, then, using it as a platform, leapt straight up. Caught on to the protruding cornice of a column, and hung a moment, studying the route before her. The temple walls sloped inward, coming to a point high above the tiled floor. The Orb, and its cage, hung from a point perhaps halfway up. Not an easy climb. She'd have to—

Something within the column cracked. Lara felt the stone beneath her fingers begin to crumble.

“Lara!” Jimmy shouted.

She leapt again, just as the stone gave way. Her fingers closed on a handhold, and she hung in space a moment, suspended by one arm.

“No worries!” she called back, and started to climb. Within seconds, she was sweating like a greased pig—the humidity was much worse higher up, and Lara realized that it couldn't have been this humid in here for two thousand years, nothing would have survived, which meant that the recent quake had affected things inside the temple much more than she'd previously surmised.

They should not, she reflected, plan on staying long.

She had reached the cage now, was practically back-to-back with it, level with that strange, cone-shaped rock formation. Holding on tight to the wall with her right hand, Lara brought her left behind her body, and grabbed hold of the iron bars. So far, so good—she'd planned this maneuver since she'd spotted the Orb from the floor below.

But now came the hard part.

Lara took a deep breath and then let go with her right hand, at the same time pushing off with her heels.

For a minute, she hung in midair.

Then her heels slammed into the wall again, chipping off stone, sending it crumbling to the temple floor below. At the same instant, both hands stretched out, and she grabbed hold of the cage.

There. Lara smiled and hung a moment, gathering herself as she lay suspended in space, parallel to the temple floor far below.

Then she looked down, and gasped.

The tiles of the floor formed a pattern, one visible only from high above.

A giant figure, drawn on the floor. A threatening, foreboding image—some sort of warrior—one whose like she'd never seen in Greek art before.

Another mystery, Lara reflected, thinking of the battlefield scene she'd spent so much time studying earlier. Neither of which she had time to puzzle through right now. She turned her attention to the black Orb, and the cage that held it.

Steadying herself with one hand, holding her legs straight as steel rods for support, she reached down and pulled the small acetylene torch off her belt. Thumbed on the flame, and brought the torch up to the cage bars.

As she did so, Lara happened to glance down again. The cool blue light of the torch's plume caught the eyes of the mysterious figure on the floor below, making them glitter like a thing alive, and casting shadows all about the cave, as well.

The earth shook.

Lara' s heels slipped on the temple wall. The cage started to swing away from her. She almost lost her grip—almost dropped the torch, as well.

“Aftershock!” she heard Jimmy shout from below.

The walls shook again, harder this time—and this time, Lara couldn't keep her legs in place. She slipped free of the temple wall—her body swung out into space, and she dangled in midair, suspended by one arm from the cage, her other hand gripping the still-lit torch.

Drop the torch, the voice of common sense told her. Grab onto the cage with both hands, and hold tight. No telling how long the aftershock will last, no telling what might happen before it stops, and you'd better be prepared for anything.

You'd better hold on to that torch, another little voice in her head whispered, a voice that told her if she dropped it she might never get it back, might never cut through the cage to get what instinct told her was the most valuable treasure in the entire cave, the black orb that hung just out of reach in front of her.

Lara gritted her teeth and held on with one hand.

The temple was vibrating like a tuning fork now. Chunks of stone, and marble, and dirt fell past her head like rain. She caught a clump of clay smack in the face, swallowing some, and turned away to spit it out.

The support column closest to her was separating from its base, sliding off it inch by inch, propelled by the force of the aftershock.

If it slipped all the way off, the whole temple was going to come down around them.

Lara opened her mouth to shout at Nicholas and Jimmy, to warn them, tell them to get out before—

The shocks stopped.

Lara looked all around her.

The small leaks from the temple roof were now streams. The temple was canted at closer to a forty-five-degree angle—the lower half was a wading pool.

Far below, the brothers were struggling to their feet.

“You all right down there?” Lara called out.

“Yeah. I think that's a sign to leave!” Jimmy shouted back.

“I think that's a sign to leave now!” Nicholas added.

They were right. No doubt about it, the Luna Temple was falling apart, about to disappear from the sight of man for a second and final time.

And yet, she still wanted the Orb.

Lara looked at it once more, trapped within the iron cage, so tantalizingly close and yet at least a couple minutes of cutting away. The light from the flash below was hitting the Orb at a new angle now, revealing details she hadn't been able to see before.

Including markings on the Orb's surface.

Intricate, gleaming carvings that shone like platinum against the black.

A pattern of some sort, clearly, but what…

No way to scan all the way around the object, get pictures of its entire surface while it—and she—were hung from the ceiling like this. Only one way to figure out what this pattern meant, really.

She had to have the Orb.

“Two minutes,” she shouted down to Jimmy and Nicholas.

“What are you, crazy?” Jimmy shouted back up. “Get down here, we have to start packing up, we have to get out of this place—”

“Two…minutes…” Lara repeated firmly, bringing the torch to bear on the first of the iron bars.

Sparks began to fly.

 

Lara's mind raced as she cut.

She peered through the torch's plume at the markings on the Orb. She'd wracked her mind, trying to figure out what language the strange markings on the Orb were, but had drawn a blank. Not Greek, clearly, nor any of the Arabic languages that had dominated the Asiatic side of the Hellespont during this time frame. She was stumped.

She was through the first bar. She glanced down, and saw Jimmy and Nicholas busily loading the sleds with the bags of treasure, casting nervous glances up toward the ceiling as they did so.

Perhaps it was her imagination, but the water did seem to be falling faster, harder, from the holes in the temple roof. And the huge support column nearest her seemed inches away from coming entirely off its base.

She finished cutting through the second bar, moved on to the third. Six in all, on the side she was cutting, and now the cage hung at such an angle that the Orb was poised to roll out the second she'd finished slicing through.

Her mind returned to the markings on the Orb. Perhaps they had something to do with the circumstances of the temple's building, what treasures Antipater had decided to store there, and yet that was wrong, too, because all the fragments she'd found stated with no uncertainty that it was Alexander who'd decided which treasures were to be brought here, and which were to be stored in Alexandria.

It was a mystery all right.

She was through the fourth bar, and saw now that she only needed to cut one more for the Orb to fall free.

Sweat beaded on her forehead. Lara wiped it away.

She was halfway through the fifth bar—really, a hard punch would snap it now, and the waiting Orb tumbled right into her hand.

“Lara, watch out!”

That was Jimmy—with a panicked overtone to his voice.

The temple was collapsing—that was her first, instinctive reaction.

She looked up, expecting to see part of the roof falling toward her. Nothing. She looked down.

Her mouth fell open in shock.

They were no longer alone in the temple.

Six men, in full diving gear, armed with spearguns, had joined them. The boys were fighting them—they'd been surprised, as well, Lara saw, because both brothers were being held from behind. The Petrakis struggled, but the other men were well trained.

Nicholas elbowed the man who held him at the chest—hard enough to make a resounding thump. The man only grunted.

Light glinted off something in his hand—a knife.

The blade flashed—Nicholas fell to the ground, blood gushing from his throat. He flopped once on the ground, then lay still.

“No!” Lara screamed, but her shout was lost in the guttural noise Jimmy made as he saw his brother fall. Jimmy reached for Nicholas—

The man nearest him darted forward, quick as lightning, Lara had never seen anyone move so fast. He punched Jimmy square in the stomach.

The air went out of Jimmy in an audible whoosh.

Then the man dragged his hand up Jimmy's chest, and Lara saw that he hadn't just punched Jimmy, he'd stabbed him, sinking the blade of his knife deep inside his body, and now that blade was traveling upward, as well, gutting Jimmy, and Lara blinked. She couldn't see for a second, she felt ill, she—

Watched Jimmy fall backward, near where his brother lay. The two boys, side by side.

Boys. She had to stop thinking of them as boys—and yet in the instant she watched them die, that was all Lara could think of, images of the two of them as they had been.

Little boys, following her around like love-struck puppy dogs. Do this, do that, take me here, take me there—

Look where she'd brought them to now.

Spears flew through the air at her.

Lara dropped the torch, sprung off the cage, and landed on the wall. Another spear hit behind her. A second chunked into the wall above her head. A third passed right between her thighs, so close it tore the fabric of her wet suit.

She looked down and saw that the man who'd killed Jimmy had thrown that one.

The two of them locked eyes.

He was Asian, Lara saw. A face she didn't know.

But one that now she would never forget.

Lara watched as he walked over to the Alexander statue, which was now so tilted that its base was partially submerged, as well. He collected the equipment she'd left there, including her speargun—and the medallion from the statue's eye. Damn it.

She had to get down to the temple floor again to stop this man. Climbing was out of the question, though, she'd be a sitting duck, and it was too far to jump…

Unless she could land in water.

Lara scanned the temple—there. Halfway across the interior, she saw a pool that looked deep enough for her to risk a dive. One problem, though—there wasn't a handhold in sight.

A spear flew past, close enough to graze the hair on her head, reminding her that she couldn't stay where she was, either. She had to get moving.

The spear stuck in the wall next to Lara, deep enough that the wall vibrated with its impact.

Aah. That gave her an idea.

Lara faked a move forward, and another spear flew through the air, anticipating where she would be. It chunked in the wall, just ahead of the first.

Perfect.

She cursed out loud for effect, then faked the same move again. With the same result.

Another spear in the wall. And then a third, right on its heels.

That should do it, Lara thought, and launched herself for real now, diving forward through the air, and grabbing onto the spear closest to her.

It held for a second, then snapped off in her grasp, and as she tumbled the Orb dropped behind the statue.

Lara used the momentum from her jump to grab onto spear number two.

That broke, as well, but she used it to swing forward again, to number three, and even as number three snapped, she stretched out, hands above her head, and jackknifed into the water, even as another volley of spears flew past.

Lara went down as deep as she could and stayed there.

She waited ten seconds, fifteen, thinking about what had just happened up above, wondering who the men were, how they'd followed her, formulating a plan of action.

Kill them all.

Which she would need a weapon for. Jimmy's murderer had her speargun. But—he'd missed the modified .45. Lara hadn't seen it, either. She thought—she hoped—that it was lying somewhere in the shallow water at the statue's base.

Only problem was getting there.

She swum twenty feet along the bottom, then quietly surfaced in front of the damaged support column.