MATTHEW REILLY THE TWO LOST MOUNTAINS Also by Matthew Reilly CONTEST TEMPLE HOVER CAR RACER THE TOURNAMENT TROLL MOUNTAIN THE GREAT ZOO OF CHINA THE SECRET RUNNERS OF NEW YORK Scarecrow ICE STATION AREA 7 SCARECROW HELL ISLAND SCARECROW AND THE ARMY OF THIEVES Jack West Jr SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS THE SIX SACRED STONES THE FIVE GREATEST WARRIORS THE FOUR LEGENDARY KINGDOMS THE THREE SECRET CITIES MATTHEW REILLY THE TWO LOST MOUNTAINS This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct. First published 2020 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000 Copyright © Karanadon Entertainment Pty Ltd 2020 The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted. This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s All rightsimagination reserved. No or, part if real, of this used book fictitiously may be without reproduced any orintent transmitted to describe by any person or entity (including Google, Amazonactual or conduct.similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the First published 2016 in Macmillanpublisher. by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000 Copyright © 2016 Karanadon Entertainment Pty Limited The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved.Typeset No part in of11/14 this book pt Sabon may be byreproduced Post Pre-press or transmitted Group by any person or entity (including Google, AmazonPrinted or similar by IVE organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing The top image on page 34 fromis by the Alexei publisher. Kouzaev, modified by the author and IRONGAV, and used under CC BY 2.0 licence The topCataloguing-in-Publication image on page 126 entry is by is vwalakte/iStockavailable from the National Library of Australia The image on page 344 is http://catalogue.nla.gov.auby Nephiliskos, modified by IRONGAV and used (and shared alike) under CC BY-SA 4.0 licence The images on pages Typeset192, 221, in 11/14 345, pt 346Sabon and by Post347 Pre-press are sourced Group from the public domain All other internalPrinted illustrations by McPherson’s and Printing endpapers Group by IRONGAV Image on page 212 sourced from the public domain All other internal illustrations and endpapers by IRONGAV The author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders for materialExtract used on in page this 1 book. Copyright Any © personSean O’Brien, or organisation 2006, taken from that DANTE’S may have INFERNO: been overlooked A Verse Translation, publishedshould by contactPicador, London.the publisher. Reproduced with permission. The paper in this book is FSC® certified. FSC® promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests. TFLK_Final_pages.indd 4 11/08/2016 12:24 PM This book is dedicated to first responders everywhere, those who run toward the danger. Thank you. 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. x MATTHEW REILLY ‘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 . PROLOGUE THE EMPTY CITY: MOSCOW But this mighty music, produced by the revolution of the whole universe, at the highest speed, cannot be perceived by human ears, any more than you can look straight at the sun, your sense of sight being overpowered by its radiance. CICERO, REFERRING TO PYTHAGORAS’S THEORY OF THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES 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 sit- ting 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 4 MATTHEW REILLY Snow fell. Wind whistled. It was a bleak overcast day. Looking around the wide plaza before her, Lily saw some build- ings 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, collaps- ing 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 through- out the world. St Basil’s Cathedral. THE TWO LOST MOUNTAINS 5 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.