The Two Lost Mountains - Jack West Jr Series 06 (2020) Read online

  About THE TWO LOST MOUNTAINS

  AN INCREDIBLE VICTORY BUT AT A TERRIBLE PRICE . . .

  Against all the odds, Jack West Jr found the Three Secret Cities but at a heartbreaking cost.

  His beloved daughter Lily, it appeared, was slaughtered by Sphinx in a cruel ancient ritual.

  TO THE MOUNTAINS AND THE FALL!

  With his rivals far ahead of him, Jack must now get to one of the five iron mountains – two of which have never been found - and perform a mysterious feat known only as ‘The Fall’.

  Although what is this object on the moon that is connected to it?

  A NEW PLAYER ARRIVES

  Amid all this, Jack will discover that a new player has entered the race, a general so feared by the four legendary kingdoms they had him locked away in their deepest dungeon.

  Only now this general has escaped and he has a horrifying plan of his own . . .

  This book is dedicated to

  first responders everywhere,

  those who run toward the danger.

  Thank you.

  Contents

  Cover

  About The Two Lost Mountains

  Dedication

  Endpapers

  Epigraph

  A quick recap . . .

  Prologue – The Empty City: Moscow

  A Girl Named Lily – Part VII The Sacrifice at Gibraltar

  First Offensive – The Moscow Rescue

  A Minotaur Named . . . – Australia/France 3-23 December

  The Secret Royal World – The Five Iron Mountains

  Second Offensive – The Falling Temple at Mount Saint-Michel

  The Secret Royal World II – The Innermost Sanctum of the Vatican

  A Girl Named Lily – Part VIII 2007 – Present

  Third Offensive – The Second Iron Mountain: Mount Blanc

  Fourth Offensive – The Two Lost Mountains

  Fifth Offensive – The Last Iron Mountain

  Final Offensive – The Five Gates of the Supreme Labyrinth

  An Interview with Matthew Reilly

  About Matthew Reilly

  Also by Matthew Reilly

  Imprint page

  Hear the sound of the Sirens’ song,

  Ride its rolling waves.

  But beware that song

  And the bliss it brings,

  For you may wake as slaves.

  Inscription on a large ancient bell

  known as ‘The Siren Bell’

  Private collection, Moscow

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’

  Robert Frost

  I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.

  Captain James T. Kirk

  A QUICK RECAP . . .

  After unexpectedly winning the Great Games—recounted in The Four Legendary Kingdoms—JACK WEST JR discovered that in order to prevent THE OMEGA EVENT, the cataclysmic collapse of the universe, he had to complete two ancient ‘trials’: the Trial of the Cities and the Trial of the Mountains.

  In The Three Secret Cities, racing against the superior forces of the four kingdoms, he successfully completed the Trial of the Cities, but at great cost. As part of that trial, unbeknownst to Jack, an Oracle of Siwa had to be ritually sacrificed in a chamber inside the Rock of Gibraltar.

  Jack’s adopted daughter LILY, twenty years old and the current Oracle, was captured by a new player in the game, SPHINX. Ruthless, calculating and knowledgeable in ancient matters, Sphinx was the watchman of the city of Atlas who had long planned to overthrow the kingdoms and seize their power.

  In the final moments of The Three Secret Cities, Sphinx took Lily to the altar inside the Rock of Gibraltar and there he performed the sickening ritual sacrifice.

  Jack arrived at that chamber soon after, to find Sphinx and his men gone and what appeared to be Lily’s body encased in a slab of hardened liquid stone. But he had to flee and so didn’t linger there.

  Three days later, Lily’s friend, ALBY CALVIN—accompanied by STRETCH and POOH BEAR—ventured to the Rock to retrieve Lily’s body.

  Upon breaking open the stone slab, however, Pooh Bear’s face lit up.

  ‘Good God,’ he gasped. ‘It’s not—’ Then, smiling, he told the others to call Jack immediately.

  Maybe it hadn’t been Lily who had been sacrificed.

  Having completed the Trial of the Cities, Sphinx and his forces—including the cunning CARDINAL MENDOZA of the Catholic Church and the ambitious CHLOE CARNARVON, the former assistant to Jack’s ally IOLANTHE COMPTON-JONES—raced off to commence the second trial, the Trial of the Mountains.

  Other forces, such as the mysterious ORDER OF THE OMEGA, a fanatical group of monks from Venice, were also on the move.

  Now, with the Omega Event fast approaching, Jack and his intrepid team—including his formidable wife ZOE; his feisty mother, the historian MAE MERRIWEATHER; and HADES, the ultra-wealthy former King of the Underworld—find themselves wounded and scattered, a long way behind their rivals in this race, and desperate to know what happened to Lily . . .

  Moscow, Russia

  23 December, 0900 hours

  Lily West woke with a jerk, startled and terrified, and freezing, freezing cold.

  She was bound and gagged, tied to a thick wooden chair and sitting out of doors, atop some steps overlooking a very wide square.

  She was not alone.

  Seated on either side of her, also bound to wooden chairs, were two headless corpses.

  Lily recoiled, aghast.

  Jesus . . .

  Looking more closely at them, she saw that the corpses were female and that they wore the black habits of nuns.

  The wounds to their necks were horrific: jagged and torn. Their heads had not been cut off. They had been wrenched off.

  Pinned to the chest of one of the grisly corpses was a sheet of paper. It fluttered in the icy wind. On it were five handwritten words:

  YOU

  WILL

  WAKE

  AS

  SLAVES

  Snow fell.

  Wind whistled.

  It was a bleak overcast day.

  Looking around the wide plaza before her, Lily saw some buildings that she recognised—albeit only from books—and suddenly she knew exactly where she was.

  She was in Red Square.

  In Moscow.

  Off to her right was the Kremlin. Its 200-foot-high blood-red walls and imposing towers stood like gigantic sentinels in the morning light, every flat surface on them caked in a layer of snow.

  Lily blinked, trying to restart her brain. Her head ached terribly. She vaguely recalled coming here, but then someone had hit her, knocked her out.

  She tried to think, to remember.

  Red Square itself—the vast parade ground used by the Russian government to host military spectacles and national events—was almost completely deserted, even though the clocktower atop the Kremlin’s main gate, Spasskaya Tower, announced that it was nine in the morning.

  Almost deserted, because of one striking thing.

  The many bodies that lay scattered around the square.

  There were maybe thirty of them, all lying face-down on the snow-dusted ground, seemingly dead.
There were men in uniform—Russian Army guards and police officers in parkas—and civilians of both sexes. They all looked like they had fallen abruptly, collapsing in mid-stride. Small piles of snow had formed on their backs.

  Aside from the drifting snow, there was no movement.

  Lily stared at them in horror.

  Suddenly, an animal whipped across the square. A street dog. It stopped to sniff one of the immobile bodies and then scurried away.

  Swivelling in her chair, Lily saw that she was sitting at the base of some stairs in front of the south face of a building known throughout the world.

  St Basil’s Cathedral.

  With its nine enormous onion-shaped towers, it was the most famous building in Russia, the symbol of Moscow.

  The historic cathedral’s onion domes were the pride of Russian architecture although no-one actually knew their origin. In modern times, the ornate domes were painted in twisting rainbows of colour—gorgeous reds and greens, pastel blues and pure whites—but that had not always been the case.

  Moscow . . . Lily thought. It was starting to come back to her.

  Sphinx had brought her here.

  After the ceremony at the Rock of Gibraltar. That terrible ceremony.

  He had wanted to go to Moscow, to some . . .

  . . . convent.

  Lily shivered.

  The cold was beginning to physically hurt her. Dressed only in jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt and a military jacket that she had acquired somewhere along the way, she was not equipped to be outside in the Russian winter.

  Her teeth began to chatter.

  With her hands bound behind her back, she couldn’t even hug herself for warmth.

  What had Sphinx said?

  An old convent in Moscow. Something kept there.

  He’d talked about it after the ceremony at Gibraltar.

  Oh, God, Lily thought. The ceremony.

  For as long as she lived, she’d never forget what had happened there . . .

  The Altar of the Cosmos

  Gibraltar, U.K. Territory

  3 December, 20 days earlier

  Lily lay face-up in a small sacrificial pool, trapped beneath its golden grille, resigned to die. She was inside a ceremonial chamber cut into the heart of the mighty Rock of Gibraltar.

  As the Oracle of Siwa, she had to be sacrificed in order to save the world.

  Directly above her was a wide slanting shaft—it looked like a colossal ancient chimney that bored upward through the Rock—and through it she could see the night-time sky and a thousand glittering stars.

  Sphinx stood over her, gripping the fabled sword, Excalibur, holding its gleaming blade poised directly above her heart, ready to run her through and thus carry out the necessary ritual.

  Lily closed her eyes and waited for the end—

  Gunfire.

  Loud and sudden.

  Her eyes sprang open.

  They were pistol shots.

  She saw Sphinx turn, confused and enraged, as a bullet nicked his shoulder, spinning him, making him drop the sword and cry out in pain.

  Lily heard four more pistol shots—single shots echoing loudly in the ancient chamber—before they were drowned out by the louder and faster clatter of automatic-rifle fire.

  Then there was silence.

  Gunsmoke filled the air.

  And the acrid smell of cordite.

  Hurried footsteps—the sound of Sphinx’s men coming to his aid.

  From her position in the shallow pool, Lily saw Cardinal Ricardo Mendoza step into view, kneel beside his master and say, ‘Sire, sire! Are you all right?’

  Sphinx rose, shoving the cardinal away. ‘I’m fine. It’s a flesh wound. How the fuck did he get out?’

  ‘We don’t know. It looks like he surprised his guards on the boat—’

  ‘Is he alive?’ Sphinx growled.

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  Gripping his bloody shoulder, Sphinx stalked out of Lily’s view.

  ‘You little shit,’ Sphinx said to someone.

  A weak voice answered him: the quivering, agonised voice of a young man or boy.

  ‘You killed . . . the only people . . . who ever loved me.’

  The voice sounded vaguely familiar and at first Lily couldn’t place it.

  Then she could.

  It was—

  ‘Get her out of the pool and put him in,’ Sphinx said. ‘He’s going to bleed out and die soon anyway.’

  Suddenly, there was movement all around Lily. The golden gate confining her to the shallow pool was swung open, its hinges squealing, and Lily was lifted out of the pool by a pair of soldiers.

  And she saw him.

  Saw the young man who had stormed the ceremonial chamber and opened fire on Sphinx and his crew with a single pistol. But now his body was punctured all over with bullet wounds as two of Sphinx’s men dragged him to the pool. He was alive, but only barely.

  Lily hadn’t seen him in years, but his features hadn’t changed.

  Like her, he was twenty. He had longer hair now—dark and straight, it dangled down carelessly into his eyes, making him look like a disaffected college kid or a member of a grunge band.

  But his face was the same. His small elfin nose and dark eyes were just like Lily’s.

  Exactly like Lily’s, to be precise.

  For he was her brother, her twin brother.

  Alexander.

  And in that fleeting moment as they were carried past each other, their identical eyes met and Lily saw that Alexander was glaring right at her.

  In his eyes was a fire, an apology, a plea to action. All in one look.

  ‘Don’t let them wi—’ he whispered before he was swept by her.

  Things moved fast from there.

  To Lily, what happened next inside the chamber, and outside it, went by in a blur.

  First, Sphinx carried out the sacrificial ceremony with ruthless efficiency.

  He lay the wounded Alexander in the shallow ceremonial pool, slammed the gate closed on top of him and then without pause, reflection or remorse, stabbed the lad through the heart.

  The sword went right through his body before it was halted by the stone bottom of the pool beneath him.

  Alexander screamed as blood blasted out of his chest and his dead body sank into the shallow little pool, its clear waters turning red.

  Silence followed.

  Lily stared in mute shock at her brother’s corpse, lying motionless in the pool. But for his actions a few moments earlier, that would’ve been her. She didn’t know what to think or what would happen next.

  And then the whole chamber glowed an eerie shade of crimson, illuminated by a strange light that emanated from the bloodstained water around Alexander’s body.

  In the sickly red glow, a series of symbols came to life on one wall: glyphs written in the Word of Thoth, the ancient language that Lily could read by sight.

  She translated the symbols silently in her head:

  The Supreme Labyrinth awaits

  With the ultimate throne at its core.

  Perform the Fall at an iron mountain

  And acquire the Mark.

  For only one with the Mark may open the Labyrinth and sit on the throne.

  Take armies if you choose.

  Use the Siren bells if you wish.

  But know that only success at the Labyrinth

  Will prevent Omega.

  Lily saw that Cardinal Mendoza had a computer program on a laptop translating the symbols at the same time she was.

  Next to Mendoza, she saw the pretty young Englishwoman who accompanied Sphinx. She was Chloe Carnarvon, the former assistant to Iolanthe Compton-Jones, the Keeper of the Royal Records.

  Lily remembered Iolanthe saying once that when Chloe Car
narvon had worked for her, Chloe had essentially been Iolanthe’s second brain. When it came to historical matters, she knew everything Iolanthe did. But when Iolanthe sided with Jack after the Great Games, Carnarvon had sided with—and slept with—Iolanthe’s brother, Orlando, the King of Land, only to betray Orlando here at the Rock in favour of Sphinx. Chloe was now filming the entire event on a digital camera.

  With a great rumbling, a stone panel in the wall slid open, revealing five sparkling gold signet rings positioned in a row on a shelf.

  Each ring bore a huge gem on it. One was a little larger than the others. Its gem was red. The gems on the other four rings were amber in colour.

  And then the ethereal crimson lightshow stopped and the cavern was plunged into relative darkness again, lit only by the electric lights Sphinx’s people had erected.

  Sphinx picked up the five rings and carried them over to the pulsing Mace of Poseidon.

  As he held them close to the Mace, the Mace’s glowing gem diminished in intensity . . .

  . . . while the gems on the five signet rings began to glow with increased power.

  ‘The power of the Mace is transferring to the rings,’ Mendoza said.

  When it was done, Sphinx held up the largest ring.

  Its giant red gem, now gleaming with light from within, had a raised image cut into it: the image of a crown.

  It pulsed with fierce power.

  Sphinx put it on.

  Chloe gasped.

  Mendoza bowed.

  ‘My emperor . . .’ he whispered.

  Sphinx gazed at the ring.

  It was a singularly beautiful thing, formidable and commanding. It was neither flashy nor gaudy. Just a clear symbol of power.

  Chloe nodded at it. ‘The ring of the emperor. Now all the bronzeman armies are yours to command.’

  Sphinx handed one of the other rings to Dion, his protégé, and another to Jaeger Eins, the leader of the Knights of the Golden Eight and thus essentially his military commander. The other two he kept for himself. ‘There are four battalions of bronzemen around the world: one at each of the three secret cities and one at the Underworld. My ring gives me command of all of them. But whoever wears these other rings can command certain battalions, too. Dion, I give you the ring that controls the bronzemen from the city of Atlas. Eins, you shall command those from the Underworld. Gather these bronzemen from the around the world. We will need them.’