Assassin's Creed: Revelations (37 page)

“No books,” said Ezio into the silence. “No artifacts . . . Just you,
fratello mio
.” He laid a hand delicately on the dead man’s shoulder. They were in no way related by blood, but the ties of the Brotherhood bound them more strongly than those of family ever could have.

“
Requiescat in Pace
, O Altaïr.”

He looked down, thinking he had caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. But there was nothing. Except that the stone on the desk was free of the hand that Ezio must have imagined had covered it. A trick of the light. No more.

Ezio knew instinctively what he had to do. He struck a flint to light a candle stump in a stick on the desk to study the stone more closely. He put his own hand out and picked it up.

The moment he had it in his hand, the stone began to glow.

He raised it to his face as familiar clouds swirled, engulfing him . . .

SEVENTY-SIX

“You say Baghdad has been sacked?”

“Yes, Father. Khan Hulagu’s Mongols have driven through the city like a conflagration. No one has been spared. He set up a wagon wheel and made the population file past it. Anyone whose head came higher than the wheel’s hub, he killed.”

“Leaving only the young and malleable?”

“Indeed.”

“Hulagu is not a fool.”

“He has destroyed the city. Burned all its libraries. Smashed the university. Killed all its intellectuals. Along with the rest. The city has never seen such a holocaust.”

“And never will again, I pray.”

“Amen to that, Father.”

“I commend you, Darim. It is well you took the decision to sail to Alexandria. Have you seen to my books?”

“Yes, Father—those we did not send with the Polo brothers, I have already sent to Latakia on wagons for embarkation.”

Altaïr sat hunched by the open doorway of his great, domed library and archive. Empty now, swept clean. Clutched to him was a small wooden box. Darim had more sense than to ask his father what it was.

“Good. Very good,” said Altaïr.

“But there is one thing—one fundamental thing—that I do not understand,” said Darim. “Why did you build such a vast library and archive, over so many decades, if you did not intend to keep your books?”

Altaïr waved an interrupting hand. “Darim, you know very well that I have long outlived my time. I must soon leave on a journey that requires no baggage at all. But you have answered your own question. What Hulagu did in Baghdad, he will do here. We drove them off once, but they will return, and when they do, Masyaf must be empty.”

Darim noticed that his father hugged the small box even more tightly to his chest as he spoke, as if protecting it. He looked at Altaïr, so fragile as to seem made of parchment; but, inside, tough as vellum.

“I see,” he said. “This is no longer a library then—but a vault.”

His father nodded gravely.

“It must stay hidden, Darim. Far from eager hands. At least until it has passed on the secret it contains.”

“What secret?”

Altaïr smiled, and rose. “Never mind. Go, my son. Go and be with your family, and live well.”

Darim embraced him. “All that is good in me, began with you,” he said.

They drew apart. Then, Altaïr stepped through the doorway. Once within, he braced himself, straining to pull a large lever just inside, up by the lintel. At last it moved and, having completed its arc, clicked into place. Slowly, a heavy green stone door rose from the floor to close the opening.

Father and son watched each other wordlessly as the door came up. Darim tried hard to keep his self-control, but finally could not restrain his tears as the door enveloped his father in his living grave. At last he found himself looking at what was, to all intents and purposes, a blank surface, only the slight change of color distinguishing door from walls, that and the curious grooves cut into it.

Beating his breast in grief, Darim turned and left.

 

 

Who were Those Who Came Before?
thought Altaïr, as he made his way unhurriedly down the long hallway that led to his great domed chamber underground. As he passed them, the torches on the walls lit his way, fueled by a combustible air that led to them from hidden pipes within the walls, ignited by sprung flints that operated as his weight triggered catches under the floor. They flared for minutes behind him, then went out again.

He shuffled on down the hall, clutching the box, his legs and arms aching with weariness.

At last he gained the great, gloomy room, and crossed it without ceremony until he reached his desk. He reached it with the relief that a drowning man feels when he finds a spar to cling to in the sea.

He sat down, placing the box carefully by him, well within reach, hardly liking to take his hands from it. He pulled paper, pen, and ink toward him, dipped the pen, but did not write. He thought instead of what he
had
written—something from his journal.

The Apple is more than a catalogue of that which preceded us. Within its twisting, sparking interior I have caught glimpses of what
will
be. Such a thing should not be possible. Perhaps it isn’t. Maybe it is simply a suggestion. I contemplate the consequences of these visions: Are they images of things to come—or simply the
potential
for what
might
be? Can we influence the outcome? Dare we try? And, in so doing, do we merely
ensure
that which we’ve seen? I am torn—as always—between action and inaction—unclear as to which—if either—will make a difference. Am I even
meant
to make a difference? Still, I keep this journal. Is that not an attempt to change—or guarantee—what I have seen? . . .

The old man sat for a while in silence, not knowing whether he felt hope or despair. Perhaps he felt neither. Perhaps he had outgrown, or outlived, both. The silence of the great hall, and its gloom, protected him like a mother’s arms. But still he could not shut out his past.

He pushed his writing materials from him and drew the box to him, placing both hands on it, guarding it—from what?

Then it seemed that Al Mualim stood before him. His old Mentor. His old betrayer. Whom he had at last exposed and destroyed. But when the man spoke, it was with menace and authority:

“In much wisdom is much grief. And he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.” The ghost leaned forward, speaking now in an urgent whisper, close to Altaïr’s ear. “Destroy it! Destroy it as you said you would!”

“I—I can’t!”

Then another voice. One which caught at his heart as he turned to it. Al Mualim had disappeared. But where was
she
? He couldn’t
see
her!

“You tread a thin line, Altaïr,” said Maria Thorpe. The voice was young, firm. As it had been when he’d met her, seven decades ago.

“I have been ruled by curiosity, Maria. As terrible as this artifact is, it contains wonders. I would like to understand, as best I can.”

“What does it tell you? What do you see?”

“Strange visions and messages. Of those who came before, of their rise, and their fall . . .”

“And what of us? Where do we stand?”

“We are links in a chain, Maria.”

“But what happens to us, Altaïr? To our family? What does the Apple say?”

Altaïr replied, “Who were those who came before? What brought them here? How long ago?” But he was talking more to himself than to Maria, who broke in on his thoughts again:

“Get rid of that thing!”

“This is my duty, Maria,” Altaïr told his wife, sadly.

Then she screamed, terribly. And the rattle in her throat followed, as she died.

“Strength. Altaïr.” A whisper.

“Maria! Where . . . where are you?” To the great hall he cried: “Where is she?” But the only answer was his echo.

Then a third voice, itself distressed, though trying to calm him.

“Father—she is gone. Don’t you remember? She is gone,” Darim said.

A despairing howl: “Where is my
wife
?”

“It has been twenty-five years, you old fool! She’s
dead
!” his son shouted at him angrily.

“Leave me. Leave me to my work!”

Softer, now: “Father—what is this place? What is it for?”

“It is a library. And an archive. To keep safe all that I have learned. All that They have shown me.”

“What have they shown you, Father?” A pause. “What happened at Alamut before the Mongols came? What did you find?”

And then there was silence, and the silence covered Altaïr like a warm sky, and into it he said:

“Their purpose is known to me now. Their secrets are mine. Their motives are clear. But this message is not for me. It is for another.”

He looked at the box on the desk before him.
I shall not touch that wretched thing again. Soon I shall pass from this world. It is my time. All the hours of the day are now colored by the thoughts and fears born of this realization. All the revelations that were ever to be vouchsafed me are done. There is no next world. Nor a return to this one. It will simply be—done. Forever.

And he opened the box. In it, on a bed of brown velvet, lay the Apple. A Piece of Eden.

He gazed at it for a moment, then rose and turned to a dark recess in the wall behind him. He pressed a lever, which opened a heavy door, covering a hidden alcove, in which stood a pedestal. Altaïr took the Apple from the box, a thing no bigger than a kickball, and transferred it quickly to the pedestal. He worked fast, before temptation could work on him, and pulled the lever again. The door over the alcove slid shut, snapping into place with finality. Altaïr knew that the lever would not operate again for two-and-a-half centuries. Time for the world to move on, perhaps. For him, though, temptation was over.

He took his seat at his desk again, and took, from a drawer, a white alabaster disc. He lit a candle by him and took the disc in both hands, raising it close to his eyes, and closing them and concentrating, he began to imbue the alabaster with his thoughts—his testament.

The stone glowed, lighting up his face for a long time. Then the glow faded, and it grew dark. All grew dark.

 

 

Ezio turned the disc over and over in his hands under the candlelight. How he had come to learn what he now knew, he had no idea. But he felt a deep fellowship, a kinship, even, with the husk that sat at his side.

He looked at Altaïr, incredulous. “Another artifact?” he said. “Another
Apple
?”

SEVENTY-SEVEN

He knew what to do, but he did it almost as if he were still in a dream. He placed the disc carefully back on the desktop and turned to the dark recess behind it. He knew where to look for the lever, and it gave immediately when he tugged gently at it. But as the door slid open, he gasped.
I thought there was only one. The one Machiavelli and I buried forever in the vault under the church of San Nicola in Carcere. And now—its twin!

He studied the Apple for a moment. It was dark and cold—lifeless. But he could feel his hand, as if independent of his will, reaching out for it.

With a supreme effort, he stopped himself.

“NO! You will stay HERE!”

He took a step back.

“I have seen enough for one lifetime!”

He put his hand on the lever.

But then the Apple flared into life, its light blinding him. He staggered back, turning, to see, in the center of the now-dazzlingly-lit chamber, the world—the world!—turning in space, twenty feet above the floor, a giant, vulgar ball of blue, brown, white, and green.

“NO!” he yelled, hiding his eyes with his hands. “I have done enough! I have lived my life as best I could, not knowing its purpose, but drawn forward like a moth to a distant moon. No more!”

Ezio had no idea where the voice was coming from, or whose it was. He took his hands from his eyes and placed them over his ears, turning to the wall, his body wrenched to and fro as if he were being beaten.

And he was pulled round to face the room. Swimming in the air, filling the gaudy brightness, were trillions of numbers and icons, calculations and formulae, and words and letters, some jumbled, some thrown together to make occasional sense, but splitting again to give way to chaos. And from their midst the voice of an old man; old because from time to time it trembled. It was not without authority. It was the most powerful voice Ezio had ever heard.

And then—something like a man, walking toward him as if from a great distance, walking through the swirling sea of all the symbols Man had ever used to try to make sense of it all; walking on air, on water, but not on land. But Ezio knew that the figure would never break free to reach him. They were on two sides of an unbridgeable abyss.