Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West (10 page)

“There’s more fractures than a piece of
ancient pottery,” Jack complained.

“There’s as many if not more fractures within
Christianity. I guess you could say most religions age in a similar
way, becoming more brittle. Usually geography or population shift
or imbalance in military technology leads to politics that provoke
a schism. The amount of pomposity in church becomes the rival flags
for Protestants versus Catholics, then Puritans versus Protestants.
How silly is that?”

Jack had abandoned a third of his food and
was cooling down, but if anything he looked still more
uncomfortable.

“You can only think like that if you don’t
believe. Different expressions of religion are channels which men
try to navigate towards their God. But men are fallible, so may
take wrong turns, and the Devil sets up diversions, perhaps even
whole routes that are wrong.”

Abigail was astonished. Her opinion of Jack,
that she thought couldn’t possibly get any lower, dropped off the
bottom of the scale. An immigration enforcer
and
a religious
fundamentalist.

“Let me guess,” she ventured. “Your
interpretation is the right one. Which church are you?”

Jack didn’t look as if he’d heard. His
discomfort was gone and his poise was one of carved triumph. His
eyes gleamed with an odd mix of determination and desire, reminding
her of grooms who stood at the altar.

“God rewards those who seek him truly.”

Abigail managed to keep her face straight,
but quivered inside. This was scary before. Now it seemed far
worse. Fundamentalists didn’t adhere to logic. She decided it was
best to move on.

“You asked about the Nizari policy of
political murders,” she stated neutrally. “You have to understand
that the sect was stateless, or at most a scattered state – their
small territorial islands were strewn over the countries or empires
of the time. Each island was impregnable in itself – at least until
the military tsunami of the Mongols crashed through – but they
couldn’t even travel between their islands without considerable
armed support. Personal threat aimed at Kings and Caliphs was a way
of ensuring that their powerful hosts left them alone. For the
threat to work, it had to be
demonstrated
now and again.

“Even Saladin went in constant fear of the
Assassins, surrounding himself with loyal guards he personally
knew. The Syrian branch of the Nizaris did make a couple of
attempts on his life, wounding him once.

“Overall, Nizari power and distribution of
resources…”

Abigail abruptly stopped herself. She was
about to say, was much like that of the Crusading Orders. Maybe the
Templars would have been left alone if they’d threatened to
assassinate Phillip the Fair, or the Pope. But she didn’t want to
lead Jack back to the Templars or indeed to the Hospitallers, not
until she’d resolved the puzzles surrounding Guy and his Holy Water
and his friendship with Sinaldin.

“Yes?” queried Jack sharply. His eyes tried
to enter her.

“Aren’t you bored yet?” asked Abigail lamely.
“There’s nothing for you here!”

“What about the secrets? What were they
hiding? This
Gnostic
stuff?”

“Guarding,” emphasised Abigail. “Gnosticism
is a big subject. The root of the word comes ultimately from the
ancient Greek
to know
. Gnostics tend to think they know
certain esoteric truths that are crucial to salvation. These are
often linked to rejection of materialism, or a rejection of the
standard rules and limits binding whichever religion spawned the
Gnostic body. The ancient Nizaris completely abandoned Shari’ah law
at times.

“It’s possible,” she admitted, “that
Safiyya’s poem is built on esoteric Ismaili truths. Anyhow,
Gnosticism frequently goes hand in hand with dualism, the theory
that there may be two aspects to God, even that one of these
aspects is evil. Dualism also allows for the
divine on
Earth
, for example in the person of an Imam.

“I’ll grant you it’s mystic. And though there
are a few million Ismailis around today, the Nizari line died out,
so we may
never
know their deepest secrets.”

“Maybe someone stumbled across those secrets,
or reinvented the Assassins, or both,” mused Jack.

“I guess that’s your department. But both
Christian and Islamic mainstreams have usually viewed their
respective Gnostic fringes as heretical, which is certainly the
case for the Assassins. I think modern Islam would absolutely
abhor
the return of such a body and its sacrilegious
mystique, quite apart from its unacceptable policy of violence.
Neither would the Pope encourage a return of the Gnostic Cathars,
who were thoroughly stamped out because of their challenge to
orthodoxy, despite in this case their beliefs being closer to what
real Christianity was originally supposed to be. So can we stay
real here?”

“You’re the one with your head stuck into
poetry and oblivious to reality,” parried Jack calmly.

Abigail glared. Jack returned a knowing
smile.

“To propose God has an evil side, is itself
evil,” he said as though talking about the weather. “No true
Christian group would do such a thing. And routes to God should be
open, not obscured by mystic shrouds. Else the Devil may more
easily twist the minds of an elite and so twist the path.”

Abigail suppressed a mocking groan. Through
religious indoctrination, this enforcer was someone’s pawn. But
frustration welled up in her too, bursting acidly out.

“Openness is indeed desirable. Do you think
Islam a false route to God, then?
A diversion of the Devil
,
as you put it?”

Jack looked as though she’d slapped his face.
His shoulders hunched, but his clear eyes regained their focus in
only a second or so and continued to probe her. His flushed skin
had returned to what she assumed was its normal pallor, yet still
glistened with sweat. Short hair bristled and his jaw was thrust
forward, a creature ready to strike, one that had slid from under a
rock to prey on those in the sun.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he answered
casually. “I don’t let anything get in the way of the job. Tell me
why you went to the mosque.”

Abigail’s nerve-system plunged into cold
shock. She gripped the edge of the table to stop her hands shaking.
She suddenly felt she was looking at herself in a movie.

“I… I thought you said you… you didn’t have
me followed!”

“I didn’t need to. We monitor everyone who
visits the mosque.”

Abigail’s shock transmuted to anger. Enormous
fury. How could he abuse people’s rights that way. Her rights! She
instinctively rose, knocking her chair over. She couldn’t remember
ever
being so angry. She felt her teeth grind. Her head
pounded and a mist clouded her vision. She wanted to punch Jack,
wanted to tear those glassy eyes from his snooping fundamentalist
face.
He was ignorant and biased and unjustly empowered!

“Dr. Leclaire.” Jack’s voice was subdued but
steely. “Can a Nizari connection be confirmed? Is it in fact the
case that your poem fragment reflects the secrets and survival of
the Assassins of Alamut? What is the death that it speaks of?”

“I don’t know,
I don’t know
,” she
yelled, long past caring that this was not entirely true, at least
for the first question.

“This is a serious matter, Dr. Leclaire, not
just an academic question of history.”

“You’re
fucking
with history! And you
want me to give you credibility. Well I won’t do that, I
won’t!”

Barely able to focus on the exit, Abigail
left Jack to pay and stormed out, followed by the gaze of all the
other customers.

When she’d gone, looks of pity or sympathy shifted
over to Jack. He was oblivious, already on the phone.

“Yes, I am still digging up history,” he
snapped. Then he breathed deeply as he forced a look of resigned
patience upon into his features. Collecting himself, he lowered his
voice.

“No, I’m not just chasing her tail,
attractive though it is. You’ll get to see a lot of it yourself.
Yes. Stop whinging. This time, the plan is
not
to spook her,
not
to show yourself. We know where she runs to now. Yeah.
Yeah, you can ditch the ridiculous scarf. Grey isn’t your colour
anyhow. And don’t screw up. She’s on high alert, and very touchy.
Not
in that sense. More like a shapely knee in the
groin.”

And, reflected Jack, he’d told her something
that maybe he shouldn’t have let slip. To get himself off a hook?
Or to intimidate? Minor mistake, hopefully, even if it incensed her
just now. What oh-so-clever Dr Leclaire needed was a bucket of cold
water.

Southern
Ethiopia: July 1157

Though weeks had passed, Arwe continued to survive
obstinately. Strips of dark dried meat seemed woven around the
knobbly-jointed poles of his limbs, the empty-looking bone barrel
of his body and the full jug of his head – full of insights that
Hakim desperately desired to possess.

Hakim’s molar sometimes ached badly these
days, sabotaging clear thought. To find relief and to further
explore Arwe’s medical technique, he’d asked the Priest-Witch about
remedies for toothache. Arwe peered and felt inside Hakim’s mouth,
then announced by way of Yaqob, “The tooth must leave your mouth at
once, or poison will damage the jaw. Also the coming rites would be
spoiled, the spirits shunning you because of this malady.”

The purpose of the impending ceremony was to
honour and induct Hakim in some way; apparently a ‘monkey-spirit’
ritual enacted by firelight, which it seemed he must experience in
order to be primed for further progress. A cow would be slaughtered
and the whole village would feast, though so far Arwe had been
oddly reluctant to pick or reveal the exact day this would take
place.

“I will remove the offending tooth right
now,” continued Yaqob as the voice of Arwe, “and we’ll enact the
rites afterwards, this very evening.”

“But Hakim,” whispered Sadiq, “I can do that.
Why didn’t you say it was so bad?”

“
I
will take the tooth out,” repeated
Arwe firmly. He must have understood Sadiq’s tone and expression,
if not the Arabic words.

Hakim frowned. Why hadn’t he told Sadiq about
his problem? Because he wished to seem impeccable?

“Sadiq, now that the old man has offered, I
can’t risk offending him.”

“If only we’d brought extraction forceps with
us. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi’s design, of course.”

Yes, reflected Hakim, as pioneered in Córdoba
by the great physician and described in his masterful thirty-volume
encyclopaedia, published by Abu al-Qasim fifty years ago.
Al-Zahrawi’s name and reputation would surely process down the
centuries. With a sudden thrill Hakim realised that, by the end of
times, his own reputation might well soar above those of all other
physicians!

He came back down to earth. Hindsight was
wonderful. An abscess indeed. He’d feared as much. Now he’d be
punished for not taking enough heed. His own health was a priority,
so that God’s work would not be hindered.

Arwe clapped his hands and gave
incomprehensible orders in the local language.

First, Guba brought a small gourd, from which
Arwe poured a measure of brown liquid into a bowl, which he gave
Hakim to drink. The taste was sharp like quince, yet spicy too.
Soon Hakim’s head was swimming and he had to lie back, only foggily
aware of what Guba was now holding out for Arwe. A knife, yes, a
blade. And wooden tools. A chisel of wood? A mallet? The objects
wavered before Hakim and he couldn’t be sure. He wanted to ask, but
his jaw had become huge and paralysed.

Experimentally, he moved his legs, only to
discover that his limbs were tiny and feeble, his torso too,
compared with his vast yet vague head. Of course his face must
enlarge enormously, to make it easier for Arwe to enter! By now his
head was so large that his senses and sensations were much diluted.
In fact the hut
was
his mouth, in which Arwe and Guba and
Sadiq all crouched. Then no, the hut wasn’t really a hut at all. It
was a great tent pitched in the desert. Someone was banging on a
tent peg within the tent that was Hakim.

Blood ran down Hakim’s chin, leaking past lips that
seemed to be the size of bananas. As his tongue probed a soft
emptiness, metallic-tasting blood oozed throughout his numbed
mouth. He spat red saliva like a sticky sauce onto his palm,
perceiving with a professional eye that clotting would soon start,
as already there was a slight thickening. He wondered if the
Priest-Witch had smeared something into the wound that would
help.

Full awareness returned. His head and upper
back were raised by some uncomfortable support. Arwe and Guba
hunched over the dirt floor, from which they’d pulled back the
matting. Guba dug a hole with the knife, then Arwe pushed something
inside, after which earth and matting were both replaced.

“They just buried your molar,” Sadiq informed
him. “Or rather what pieces are left of it, wrapped in a leaf. How
do you feel?”

Hakim struggled to sit upright. Sadiq’s arm
helped him, then held him as the world swam, before suddenly
stabilising. He could feel blood in his throat! Not to worry, the
flow would soon cease. More delicate probing revealed that the edge
of the hole amid his molars was loose, a flap.

“First they cut your gum,” Sadiq commented.
“And then…”

“Later, later.” Burying the extracted tooth
must be a rite of witchcraft, presumably benevolent, perhaps to
assist healing? Or maybe Arwe simply liked to keep trophies under
his floor. Alternatively, the Priest-Witch didn’t wish such things
to fall into the wrong hands, if to Arwe’s mind possession of part
of a living person conveyed some power over that same person.
Clearly he didn’t intend to exercise any such power malignly, since
he hadn’t tried to hide where he was putting the fragments of
demolished molar.