Revelations

by Oliver Bowden

  Ezio paused. “Altaïr made a great . . . study, throughout the latter years of his long life, of certain . . . codes, which were vouchsafed him. I remember one passage of his writings by heart. Shall I tell you it?”

  “Please.”

  “Altaïr wrote: Over time, any sentence uttered long and loud enough, becomes fixed. Provided, of course, that you can outlast the dissent and silence your opponents. But should you succeed, and remove all challengers, then what remains? Truth! Is it truth in some objective sense? No. But how does one ever achieve an objective point of view? The answer is that one doesn’t. It’s literally, physically impossible. Too many variables. Too many fields and formulae to consider. The Socratic method understood this. It provided for an asymptotic approach to truth. The line never meets the curve at any finite point. But the very definition of the asymptote implies an infinite struggle. We inch closer and closer to a revelation, but never reach it. Not ever . . . And so I have realized that, as long as the Templars exist, they will attempt to bend reality to their will. They recognize that there is no such thing as an absolute truth, or, if there is, we are hopelessly underequipped to recognize it. And so, in its place, they seek to create their own explanation. It is the guiding principle of what they call their New World Order: to reshape existence in their ‘own’ image. It’s not about artifacts. It’s not about men. These are merely tools. It’s about concepts. Clever of them, for how does one wage war against a concept? It is the perfect weapon. It lacks a physical form yet can alter the world around us in numerous, often violent, ways. You cannot kill a Creed. Even if you kill all its adherents, destroy all its writings—that provides a reprieve at best. Someday, someday, we shall rediscover it. Reinvent it. I believe that even we, the Assassins, have simply rediscovered an Order that predates the Old Man of the Mountain . . . All knowledge is a chimera. It all comes back to time. Infinite. Unstoppable. It begs the question, what hope is there? My answer is this: We must reach a place where that question is no longer relevant. The struggle itself is asymptotic. Always approaching a resolution but never reaching it. The best we can hope for is to smooth the line a bit. Bring about stability and peace, however temporary. And understand, Reader, it will always and forever be only temporary. For as long as we continue to reproduce, we will give rise to doubters and challengers. Men who will rise up against the status quo for no other reason, sometimes, than that they have nothing better to do. It is Man’s nature to disagree. War is but one of the many ways in which we do so. I think many have yet to understand our Creed. But such is the process. To be mystified. To be frustrated. To be educated. To be enlightened. And then at last, to understand. To be at peace.”

  Ezio fell silent. Then he said: “Does that make sense?”

  “Grazie. Yes, it does.” She gazed at him as he stood, lost in thought, his eyes on the fortress. “Do you regret your decision? To live as an Assassin for so long?”

  He sighed. “I do not remember making any decision. This life—it chose me.”

  “I see,” she replied, dropping her eyes to the ground.

  “For three decades I have served the memory of my father and my brothers, and fought for those who have suffered the pain of injustice. I do not regret those years, but now—” He took a deep breath, as if some force greater than himself had released him from its grip, and he moved his gaze from the castle to the eagle, still soaring, soaring. “Now it is time to live for myself, and let them go. To let go of all of this.”

  She took his hand. “Then let go, Ezio. Let go. You will not fall far.”

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  It was late in the afternoon when they arrived at the outer bailey gate. It stood open, and already, climbing plants were weaving their way around its pillars. The winch mechanisms above were festooned with creepers. They crossed to the inner bailey and there, too, the gates were open, and within, the courtyard showed signs of a hasty departure. A half-laden, abandoned supply wagon stood near a huge, dead plane tree under which a broken stone bench rested.

  Ezio led the way into the keep and down a staircase into the bowels of the castle, carrying a torch to light them as he led the way down a series of dismal corridors, until, at last, they stood before a massive stone door made of some smooth, green stone. Its surface was broken by five slots, arranged in a semicircle at shoulder height.

  Ezio put down his pack and from it produced the five keys.

  He weighed the first one in his hand. “The end of the road,” he said, as much to himself as to Sofia.

  “Not quite,” said Sofia. “First, we have to discover how to open the door.”

  Ezio studied the keys and the slots into which they must fit. Symbols surrounding the slots gave him his first clue.

  “They must—somehow—match the symbols on the keys,” he said, thoughtfully. “I know that Altaïr would have taken every precaution to safeguard this archive—there must be a sequence. If I fail to get that right, I fear the door may remain locked forever.”

  “What do you hope to find behind it?” Sofia sounded breathless, almost—awed.

  Ezio’s own voice had sunk to a whisper, though there was no one but her to hear him. “Knowledge, above all else. Altaïr was a profound man and a prolific writer. He built this place as a repository for all his wisdom.” He looked at her. “I know that he saw many things in his life and learned many secrets, both troubling and deep. He acquired such knowledge as would drive lesser men to despair.”

  “Then is it wise to tap into it?”

  “I am worried, it is true. But then”—he cracked a smile—“I am not, as you should know by now, a lesser man.”

  “Ezio—always the joker.” Sofia smiled back, relieved that the tension had been broken.

  He placed the torch he held in a sconce, where it gave them both enough illumination to read by. But he noticed that the symbols on the door had begun to glow with an indefinable light, scarcely perceptible, but clear, and that the keys themselves glowed, seemingly in response. “Have a careful look at the symbols on these keys with me. Try to describe them out loud as I look at the symbols on the door.”

  She put on her glasses and took the first of the keys he gave her. As she spoke, he studied the markings on the door closely.

  Then he gave a gasp of recognition. “Of course. Altaïr spent much time in the East, and gained much wisdom there.” He paused. “The Chaldeans!”

  “You mean—this might have something to do with the stars?”

  “Yes—the constellations. Altaïr traveled in Mesopotamia, where the Chaldeans lived—”

  “Yes, but they lived two thousand years ago. We have books—Herodotus, Diodoros Siculus—that tell us they were great astronomers, but no detailed knowledge of their work.”

  “Altaïr had—and he has passed it on here, encoded. We must apply our weak knowledge of the stars to theirs.”

  “That is impossible! We all know that they managed to calculate the length of a solar year to within four minutes, and that’s pretty accurate, but how they did it is another matter.”

  “They cared about the constellations and the movement of the heavenly bodies through the sky. They thought, by them, they could predict the future. They built great observatories—”

  “That is pure hearsay!”

  “It’s all we have to go on, and look—look here. Don’t you recognize that?”

  She looked at a symbol engraved on one of the keys.

  “He’s made it deliberately obscure—but isn’t that”—Ezio pointed—“the constellation of Leo?”

  She peered at what he had shown her. “I believe it is!” she said, looking up, excited.

  “And here”—Ezio turned to the door and looked at the markings near the slot he had just been examining—“here, if I am not mistaken, is a diagram of the constellation of Cancer.”

  “But that is the constellation next to Leo, isn’t it? And isn’t it also the sign which precedes Leo in the Zodiac?”

  “Which was invented by—”r />
  “The Chaldeans!”

  “Let’s see if this theory holds water,” said Ezio, looking at the next slot. “Here is Aquarius.”

  “How apt,” Sofia joked, but she looked seriously at the keys. At last she held one up. “Aquarius is flanked by Pisces and Capricorn,” she said. “But the one that comes after Aquarius is Pisces. And here—I think—it is!”

  “Let’s see if the others work out in a similar way.”

  They worked busily and found, after only a matter of ten minutes more, that their supposition seemed to work. Each key bore the symbol of a constellation corresponding to a sign of the Zodiac, and each key sign corresponded to a slot identified with a constellation immediately preceding it in the Zodiac cycle.

  “Quite a man, your Altaïr,” said Sofia.

  “We’re not there yet,” Ezio replied. But, carefully, he put the first key into what he hoped was its corresponding slot—and it fit.

  As did the other four.

  And then—it was almost an anticlimax—slowly, smoothly, and soundlessly, the green door slid down into the stone floor.

  Ezio stood in the entrance. A long hallway yawned before him, and, as he looked, two torches within, simultaneously and spontaneously, flared into life.

  He took one from its sconce and stepped forward. Then he hesitated, and turned back to Sofia.

  “You had better come back out of there alive,” she said.

  Ezio gave her a mischievous smile and squeezed her hand tightly. “I plan to,” he said.

  He made his way forward.

  As he did so, the door to the vault slid closed again, so fast that Sofia hardly had time to react.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  Ezio walked slowly down the hallway, which sloped ever downward and broadened out as he progressed. He scarcely had need of his torch since the walls were lined with them, and they flared alight, by some mysterious process, as he passed them. But he had no sense of unease, or trepidation. In a curious way, he felt as if he were coming home. As if something was nearing its completion.

  At length, the hallway debouched into a vast, round chamber, 150 feet across and 150 feet high to the top of its dome, like the circular nave of some wondrous basilica. In the body of the room there were cases that must once have contained artifacts; but they were empty. The multiple galleries that ran round it were lined with bookshelf upon bookshelf—every inch of every wall was covered with them.

  Ezio noticed, to his astonishment, that every single one of them was empty.

  But he had no time to ponder the phenomenon, as his eye was drawn irresistibly to a huge oak desk on a high podium at the far end of the room, opposite the entrance. It was brightly lit from somewhere far above, and the light fell squarely on the tall figure seated at the desk.

  And Ezio did feel something like awe, for in his heart he knew immediately who it was. He approached with reverence, and when he drew near enough to touch the cowled figure in the chair, he fell to his knees.

  The figure was dead—he had been dead a long time. But the cloak, and white robes, were undamaged by the passage of centuries, and even in his stillness, the dead man radiated—something. Some kind of power—but no earthly power. Ezio, having made his obeisance, rose again. He did not dare lift the cowl to see the face, but he looked at the long bones of the skeletal hands stretched out on the surface of the desk, as if drawn to them. On the table, there was a pen, together with blank sheets of ancient parchment and a dried-up inkwell. Under the figure’s right hand lay a circular stone—not unlike the keys of the door, but more delicately wrought, and made, as Ezio thought, of the finest alabaster he had ever seen.

  “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.

  What brought Them here? What drove Them out? And what of Their artifacts? What we have called Pieces of Eden? Messages in bottles? Tools left behind to aid and guide us? Or do we fight for control over Their refuse, giving divine purpose and meaning to little more than discarded toys?

  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? . . .

  How naïve to believe that there might be a single answer to every question. Every mystery. That there exists a lone, divine light that rules over everything. They say it is a light that brings truth and love. I say it is a light that blinds us—and forces us to stumble about in ignorance. I long for the day when men will turn away from invisible monsters, and once more embrace a more rational view of the world. But these new religions are so convenient—and promise such terrible punishment should one reject them—I worry that fear shall keep us stuck to what is truly the greatest lie ever told . . .