Assassin's Creed The Secret Crusade (16 page)

24

There was still something Altaïr needed to know, though.

And with the last of the city regents dead, now was the time to ask it. He steeled himself as he was ushered once more into Al Mualim’s chambers.

‘Come in, Altaïr. I trust you are well rested? Ready for your remaining trials?’ said the Master.

‘I am. But I’d speak with you first. I have questions …’

Al Mualim indicated his disapproval by raising his chin and pursing his lips slightly. No doubt he remembered the last occasion when Altaïr had pressed for answers. So did Altaïr, who had decided to tread more carefully this time, keen not to see a reappearance of the Master’s blade.

‘Ask, then,’ said Al Mualim. ‘I’ll do my best to answer.’

Altaïr took a deep breath. ‘The Merchant King of Damascus murdered the nobles who ruled his city. Majd Addin in Jerusalem used fear to force his people into submission. I suspect William meant to murder Richard, and hold Acre with his troops. These men were meant to aid their leaders. Instead they chose to betray them. What I do not understand is
why
.’

‘Is the answer not obvious? The Templars desire control. Each man – as you’ve noted – wanted to claim their cities in the Templar name that the Templars themselves might rule the Holy Land and eventually beyond. But they cannot succeed in their mission.’

‘Why is that?’ asked Altaïr.

‘Their plans depend upon the Templar Treasure … the Piece of Eden … But we hold it now. And they cannot hope to achieve their goals without it.’

Of course, thought Altaïr. This was the item so many of his targets had referred to.

‘What is this treasure?’ he said.

Al Mualim smiled, then went to the rear of his chamber, bent and opened a chest. He took a box from it, returned to his desk and placed it down. Altair knew what it was without looking, but still found his gaze drawn to it – no,
dragged
to it. It was the box Malik had retrieved from the Temple, and as before it seemed to glow, to radiate a kind of power. He had known all along, he realized, that this was the treasure they spoke of. His eyes went from the box to Al Mualim, who had been watching his reaction. The Master’s face bore an indulgent expression, as though he had seen many behave in this way. And that this was only the beginning.

For now he reached into the box and took from it a globe, about the size of two fists: a golden globe with a mosaic design that seemed to pulse with energy, so that Altaïr found himself wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. If maybe it was …
alive
in some way. But he was distracted. Instead he felt the globe pulling at him.

‘It is … temptation,’ intoned Al Mualim.

And suddenly, like a candle snuffed out, the globe stopped pulsing. Its aura was gone. Its draw suddenly non-existent. It was … just a globe again: an ancient thing, beautiful in its own way but, still, a mere trinket.

‘It’s just a piece of silver …’ said Altaïr.

‘Look at it,’ insisted Al Mualim.

‘It shimmers for the briefest moment, but there’s really nothing spectacular about it,’ said Altaïr. ‘What am I supposed to see?’

‘This “piece of silver” cast out Adam and Eve.
This is the Apple.
It turned staves into snakes. Parted and closed the Red Sea. Eris used it to start the Trojan War. And with it, a poor carpenter turned water into wine.’

The Apple, the Piece of Eden?
Altaïr looked at it doubtfully. ‘It seems rather plain for all the power you claim it has,’ he said. ‘How does it work?’

‘He who holds it commands the hearts and minds of whoever looks upon it – whoever “tastes” of it, as they say.’

‘Then de Naplouse’s men …’ said Altaïr, thinking of the poor creatures in the hospital.

‘An experiment. Herbs used to simulate its effects … To be ready for when they held it.’

Altaïr saw it now. ‘Talal supplied them. Tamir equipped them. They were preparing for something … But what?’

‘War,’ said Al Mualim, starkly.

‘And the others … the men who ruled the cities … They meant to gather up their people. Make them like de Naplouse’s men.’

‘The perfect citizens. The perfect soldiers. A perfect world.’

‘Robert de Sable must never have this back,’ said Altaïr.

‘So long as he and his brothers live, they will try,’ said Al Mualim.

‘Then they must be destroyed.’

‘Which is what I’ve had you doing,’ smiled Al Mualim. ‘There are two more Templars who require your attention,’ he said. ‘One in Acre, known as Sibrand. One in Damascus, called Jubair. Visit the Bureau leaders. They’ll instruct you further.’

‘As you wish,’ said Altaïr, bowing his head.

‘Be quick about it,’ said Al Mualim. ‘No doubt Robert de Sable is made nervous by our continued success. His remaining followers will do their best to expose you. They
know
you come: the man in the white hood. They’ll be looking for you.’

‘They won’t find me. I’m but a blade in a crowd,’ said Altaïr.

Al Mualim smiled, proud once more of his pupil.

25

It was Al Mualim who had taught them the Creed, the young Altaïr and Abbas. The Master had filled their young heads with the tenets of the Order.

Every day, after a breakfast of flat bread and dates, stern governesses had seen to it that they were washed and neatly dressed. Then, with books clasped to their breasts, they had hurried along corridors, their sandals slapping on the stone, chatting excitedly, until they reached the door to the Master’s study.

Here they had had a ritual. Both passed a hand over his own mouth to go from happy face to serious face, the face the Master expected. Then one would knock. For some reason they both liked to knock, so they took it in turns each day. Then they would wait for the Master to invite them in. There, they would sit cross-legged on cushions that Al Mualim had provided especially for them – one for Altaïr, and one for his brother, Abbas.

When they first began their tutelage they had been frightened and unsure, of themselves, of each other and in particular of Al Mualim, who would tutor them in the morning and at evening, with training in the yard in the afternoon and then again at night. Long hours spent learning the ways of the Order, watching the Master pace the study, his hands behind his back, occasionally stopping to admonish them if he thought they weren’t paying attention. They both found Al Mualim’s one eye disconcerting and felt fixed in place by it sometimes. Until one night Abbas had whispered across their room, ‘Hey, Altaïr?’

Altair turned to him, surprised. Neither had done this before, begun talking after the lights had been snuffed. They had lain in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Until that night. The moon was full and the sheet at their window glowed white, lighting the room a soft, grey hue. Abbas was lying on his side looking across at Altaïr, and when he had the other boy’s attention he placed a hand over one eye, and said, in an almost perfect approximation of Al Mualim, ‘We are nothing if we do not abide by the Assassin’s Creed.’

Altaïr had dissolved into giggles and from then the two were friends. From now on when Al Mualim admonished them, it was for the stifled laughter he heard when his back was turned. Suddenly the governesses found that their charges weren’t quite so meek and acquiescent.

And Al Mualim taught them the tenets. The tenets that Altaïr would neglect later in life, at a cost dear to him. Al Mualim told them that the Assassins were not indiscriminate killers, not as the world at large liked to think, but were tasked only with slaying the evil and corrupt; their mission was to bring peace and stability to the Holy Land, to instil in it a code not of violence and conflict but of thought and contemplation.

He taught them to master their feelings and emotions, to cloak their disposition and be absorbed by the world about them, so that they might move among normal people undetected, a blank space, a ghost in the crowd. To the people, the Assassin must be a kind of magic they did not understand, he said, but that, like all magic, it was reality bent to the will of the Assassin.

He taught them to protect the Order at all times; that the Brotherhood was ‘more important than you, Altaïr. It is more important than you, Abbas. It is more important than Masyaf and myself.’ Thus, the action of one Assassin should never call harm up upon the Order. The Assassin should never compromise the Brotherhood.

And though Altaïr would one day disregard this doctrine, too, it was not for want of Al Mualim’s tutoring. He taught them that men had created boundaries and declared all within those boundaries to be ‘true’ and ‘real’, but in fact they were false perimeters, imposed by those who would presume to be leaders. He showed them that the bounds of reality were infinitely broader than mankind’s limited imagination was able to conceive, and that only the few could see beyond those boundaries – only a few dared even question their existence.

And they were the Assassins.

And because the Assassins were able to see the world as it truly was, then to the Assassin everything was possible – everything was permitted.

Every day, as Altaïr and Abbas learned more and more about the Order, they also grew closer. They spent almost all day with one another. Whatever Al Mualim taught them, their own day-to-day reality was in fact insubstantial. It consisted of each other, the governesses, Al Mualim’s classes and a succession of combat trainers, each with a different speciality. And far from everything being permitted, virtually nothing was. Any entertainment was provided by the boys themselves, and so they spent long hours talking when they should have been studying. A subject they rarely discussed was their fathers. At first Abbas had talked only of Ahmad returning one day to Masyaf, but as the months turned into years he spoke of it less. Altaïr would see him standing at the window, watching over the valley with glittering eyes. Then his friend began to withdraw and become less communicative. He was not so quick to smile any more. Where before he had spent hours talking, now he stood at the window instead.

Altaïr thought: If only he knew. Abbas’s grief would flare and intensify, then settle into an ache, just as Altaïr had experienced. The fact of his father’s death hurt him every day, but at least he
knew
. It was the difference between a dull ache and a constant sense of hopelessness.

So one night, after the candles had been snuffed out, he told Abbas. With bowed head, fighting back the tears, he told Abbas that Ahmad had come to his quarters and there he had taken his own life, but that Al Mualim had decided it best to hide this fact from the Brotherhood, ‘in order to protect you. But the Master hasn’t witnessed your yearning at first hand. I lost my father, too, so I know. I know that the pain of it recedes over time. By telling you, I hope to help you, my friend.’

Abbas had simply blinked in the darkness, then turned over in his bed. Altaïr had wondered how he had expected Abbas to react. Tears? Anger? Disbelief? He had been prepared for them all. Even to bar Abbas in and prevent him going to the Master. What he hadn’t expected was this … emptiness. This silence.

26

Altaïr stood on a rooftop in Damascus, looking down on his next target.

The smell of burning sickened him. The sight too. Of books being burned. Altaïr watched them crinkle, blacken and burn, thinking of his father, who would have been disgusted; Al Mualim, too, when he told him. To burn books was an affront to the Assassin way. Learning is knowledge, and knowledge is freedom and power. He knew that. He had forgotten it, somehow, but he knew it once more.

He stood out of sight on the ledge of the roof overlooking the courtyard of Jubair’s
madrasah
in Damascus. Smoke rose towards where he stood but all of the attention below was focused on the fire, piles of books, documents and scrolls at its centre. The fire and Jubair al-Hakim, who stood nearby, barking orders. All were doing his bidding apart from one, Altaïr noticed. This scholar stood to the side, gazing into the fire, his expression echoing Altaïr’s thoughts.

Jubair wore leather boots, a black headcloth and a permanent scowl. Altaïr watched him carefully: he had learned much about him. Jubair was the chief scholar of Damascus but in name only, for it was a most unusual scholar who insisted not on spreading learning but on destroying it. In this pursuit he had enlisted the city’s academics, whose presence was encouraged by Salah Al’din.

And why were they doing it, collecting then destroying these documents? In the name of some ‘new way’ or ‘new order’, which Altaïr had heard about before. Exactly what it involved wasn’t clear. He knew
who
was behind it, though. The Templars, his quarry being one of them.

‘Every single text in this city must be destroyed.’ Below him Jubair was exhorting his men with a fanatic’s zeal. His scholar helpers scurried about, laden with armfuls of papers that they had carried from somewhere hidden from Altaïr. They were casting them into the flames, which bloomed and grew with each fresh delivery. From the corner of his eye he saw the distant scholar becoming more and more agitated, until suddenly, as though he could no longer contain himself, he sprang forward to confront Jubair.

‘My friend, you must not do this,’ he said, his jovial tone belying his obvious distress. ‘Much knowledge rests within these parchments, put there by our ancestors for good reason.’

Jubair stopped, to stare at him with naked contempt. ‘And what
reason
is this?’ he snarled.

‘They are beacons meant to guide us – to save us from the darkness that is ignorance,’ implored the scholar. The flames danced tall at his back. Scholars came with more armfuls of books that they deposited on the fire, some casting nervous glances at where Jubair and the protester stood.

‘No.’ Jubair took a step forward, forcing the naysayer to retreat a step. ‘These bits of paper are covered with lies. They poison your minds. And so long as they exist, you cannot hope to see the world as it truly is.’

Trying desperately to be reasonable, the scholar still couldn’t hide his frustration. ‘How can you accuse these scrolls of being weapons? They’re tools of learning.’