A Song of Ascents
An Assassin's Creed fan fiction by xahra99
Author's Note: This story slots neatly in between the Malik-centric fics The Length of God's Patience and The Straight Path in my epic AC Crusades canon. It does, however, read perfectly well alone.
Jerusalem, December 1191
It never snowed in Jerusalem.
Even so, it was cold. Malik al-Sayf straightened up and pulled his hood around his face against the chill. He blew on skinned knuckles to warm them, balancing with careless precision on a narrow joist that jutted out from one of Jerusalem's many minarets. The wind tugged at his robe. Below him, the city stretched out towards white-turbaned mountains.
Malik knew only too well that the serenity was an illusion, but it was a beautiful sight all the same. Jerusalem's sunset-tinted walls cradled the buildings like outstretched hands. Lights glittered from the flagstones in the richer quarters and the last rays of the sun gleamed from the gilded Dome of the Rock. For a few precious moments Jerusalem resembled a fantasy city from the Thousand and One Nights. Malik could not see the scars that remained from a hundred years of siege. He could not see the empty houses with their doors removed from their hinges and sawn into coffins for their inhabitants. He far preferred viewing the city from a vantage point; a minaret, perhaps, or the spire of a Christian church. It was far easier to see Al Mualim's larger picture from the sky. Malik could almost make out the road that ran to Masyaf's gates.
He perched like an ill-humoured hawk on his joist.
We've slain our enemies, he thought. Killed those who corrupted the land. And now the men have died, the country is in ruins and events have escaped anybody's control. Al Mualim taught us that in doing so, we would sow the seeds of peace.
Could it be that he was wrong?
The joist below Malik creaked as he shifted his weight. The toes of his boots jutted out over the void. Malik leaned forwards and let himself fall, trusting his fate to the fickle gods of gravity. They did not fail. Moments later Malik landed on his back in a pile of straw.
Sound swept over him like a crashing wave. The streets of Jerusalem were far more chaotic than her rooftops. The city was a garrison for Saladin's troops, a haven for the refugees of Acre, and a war banner flying in the face of the Crusaders. Malik had no doubt that the trickle of pilgrims would become a flood in time-no other city held the temples of three faiths-but pilgrims would stay away as long as there was war.
The narrow streets were crowded with refugees, soldiers and beggars. Several of them gave Malik strange looks.
"He must be mad," one said. "He's going to hurt himself if he carries on like that."
Malik sighed, hauled himself from the straw, and began his work. He had closed the bureau for the night, an infrequent but not extraordinary event. If the Assassins needed him, they would have to come and find him. It would be good practice for Jerusalem's fidai'in.
Besides, he thought, the bureau smells of dust, and I have had enough of books for now. I never knew how Al Mualim managed to stay in Masyaf year-round. The fidai'in can gather information, but I have always liked to see things for myself.
He felt a stab of unease at the thought of the Assassin Grand Master. Al Mualim had been a good teacher for many years. Malik owed the Master a lot, and he knew it. But the Templars were stronger than ever despite Altaïr's decimation of their ranks. Malik had more questions for Al Mualim every day, but the old man never left Masyaf.
Significance comes not from a single act, he thought, but the consequences borne of it. Are those his words or mine? I cannot tell. And why does the thought make me so uneasy? He is my Master, after all.
Could it be that Jerusalem has twisted my mind?
He shrugged, shelved his doubts for the present and headed towards a bundle of rags in a nearby alley, making no attempt to walk quietly. The bundle stirred as Malik drew closer and extended a withered hand. Malik knelt down and pressed a copper coin into the beggar's gnarled and outstretched palm.
The woman's voice was shrill as a broken flute. "Oh, how generous thou art, God!" she exclaimed.
Malik guessed that recent pickings had not been good. "Buy a blanket," he suggested. "It's getting cold."
The old woman tilted her head and bit the edge of the coin to test its quality. "The world is a cold place," she said.
"That I cannot argue, sister." Malik straightened up from his crouch on the cold flagstones. "All the same, come to my shop on the Street of the Booksellers when next you need help. I'll pay you for the news."
The beggar's eyes glittered beadily. "What news?"
"News about the city," Malik said. The old woman was certainly no fighter, but the news of dozens like her had guided the blades of the fidai'in for years.
The beggar grinned toothlessly. The money Malik had given her vanished into the ragged folds of her robe as she turned to the next passerby in supplication. "Alms, sayyid? Alms for the poor?"
Malik heard her call echoing down the narrow alleys as he left. Her thin voice blended with a chorus of similar appeals. There were far more beggars in Jerusalem than they used to be, and not all of them were old. The poor of Jerusalem had always teetered upon the brink of starvation. Now they toppled over it in waves. Every one of them had a story to tell. Malik had heard more tales than he had thought possible as he recruited informers for the Assassin Brotherhood.
"Sayyid...I used to be a water-seller, but Madj Addin's men have closed my well and charge twice as much to drink..."
"I was a tanner once, but Salah-ad-din raised taxes, and I could not afford to pay..."
"My story? I sold henna to ladies in the marketplace, but the mullahs told me it was a crime for women to decorate themselves. They broke my cart and trampled my goods, and now I have nowhere else to go."
He paused a few times to hand out money to those beggars who seemed slightly saner than the rest. As he passed over the coins he told them, "Find me in the Street of the Booksellers. Tell me what you know. If it's worth something I'll pay you for your time."
Nobody questioned him. All of them took the money. A few offered him information then and there; and several other things as well. It was likely they had nothing else left to sell. Malik had one coin left when he walked down a street he had not taken before and entered a caliph's maze of courtyards and caravanserais, churches and convents. It took him a few moments to extricate himself. When he did, he realised that he had passed from his usual haunts in the poor district of Jerusalem. The Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre glowed with candlelight at the end of a narrow alleyway.
Malik had rarely set foot in the Middle District since he arrived. Its inhabitants were too rich to him to bribe and far too poor to be involved in politics. The Church's broken tower was one of the few landmarks he recognised. He headed for the building, wrapping himself in his doubts like a familiar robe.
He knew that he would feel much better if he could only voice his misgivings, but an Assassin dai could hardly unburden himself to the fidai'in. Malik could dispatch a pigeon to another dai, requesting conversation. Failing that, he could send a message to the Master himself. But Al Mualim had changed, had become far less open to questioning of any kind, and it was that which gave Malik most concern. Al Mualim might put Malik's doubts to rest, or depose him. He could demote him to a novice like he had done to Altaïr or execute him like Masun.
There was a time when I would have trusted the old man absolutely, he thought. But is it right to put so much faith in any man?
Malik had nearly reached the church when a beggar blocked his path. The old man had installed himself at the alley mouth. He held out a hand as frail as kindling to Malik as he walked by. The Assassin tossed him his last copper coin, and the beggar threw it back.
Malik let the coin bounce harmlessly from his arm. "You don't have to take the money," he said, trapping the coin under his boot as it rolled across the street. "But-"
"I've heard what you say!" the old beggar interrupted. "Selling secrets in return for coin. I'll have none of it." His old body might have been frail, but there was nothing wrong with his voice.
"Suit yourself," Malik told him.
"I know what you are!" the man spat. Droplets of stained saliva flew like venom from his mouth. "Your order is beneath contempt. You are jackals. Heretics. Murderers. Look around. After all this death, is the city any better? I shall not help you."
For Malik it was as if his doubts had come to life. He recoiled instinctively, his retort dying on his lips even as his hand moved to the hilt of his knife. "You are insane," he snapped once he had calmed himself. Only the Creed held him back from sinking his knife into the madman's frail body. "I shall not listen to your lies."
"Murderer!" the old man hissed. "Traitor! Assassin!"
Malik turned away before he did something that he would regret. When he looked back the old man had gone and the coin that he had dropped no longer glinted on the ground. Malik's doubts still remained.
How could a few months in Jerusalem undo the teachings of a lifetime? Was corruption so easy? Or was it that simply he had begun to think from himself, away from Al Mualim's commanding presence?
He shrugged off his unease and stared up at the domed roof of the church as if the tenets of the Christians held the answers that the Assassins' Creed did not.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was a low, sturdy building. Candles glowed golden as coins in its arched windows. Its ruined tower stretched up into the sky. Malik's four remaining fingers itched. It would be a good climb, he thought, but not impossible. The Christians built their temples tall. They made excellent vantage points.
Even the thought of climbing did nothing to settle Malik's nerves. When somebody tapped him on the shoulder, he nearly stabbed the man reflexively before his mind registered the peasant as no threat.
The man must have seen the look on Malik's face. He stepped back quickly and held up his hands in supplication. "Forgive me, sayyid. But it is very important."
Malik's hand inched away from his knife. "What do you want?"
The peasant bowed. He was a nondescript peasant; face burned dark by the sun, his clothes better than the old beggar's but poorer in quality than Malik's own Assassin whites. "My name is Karim. You are Malik al-Sayf. Sayyid, they say you are a good man."
It was not the most auspicious opening line Malik had ever heard. He gestured to the peasant to continue, expecting the man to demand money.
Karim took a deep breath. "Sayyid, you must help. They are going to kill the old Jew."
Malik did not waste time asking questions. He had several, beginning with Who? and passing through What?, Where? and Why? on the way to the most important query of all, which was 'Why is this my business?' "Show me," he said.
Karim glanced nervously around, as if Crusaders could be hiding behind each and every pillar. He nodded briefly and led Malik to the small courtyard at the front of the church. A small crowd had gathered there. Pilgrims filed around them and vanished into the arched doorway on their way to worship, but the crowd paid no mind. They had found something much more interesting than worship. They'd found violence, and blood.
A small knot of robed men clustered in the centre of the crowd. They crowded together and drew apart in unison, like partners in a brutal dance. Their shadows spun like puppets in the flickering lamplight. Malik could just make out the sprawled figure of an old man on the cobbles beneath their feet. He watched as one man stepped forwards and swung his foot back in a hard, accurate arc that terminated in the old Jew's ribcage. The man accepted the blow mutely, as if kicks and punches fell from the sky as naturally as rain.
Malik's right hand strayed to the hilt of his dagger. The Jews were unpopular for many reasons; chief amongst them being that they were not Muslims, but at least most Muslims had the decency not to bloody the Jews in the shadows of their own temples.
"Christ-killer!" shrieked one of the attackers. "Your kind crucified our Lord!"
If Malik had been in the mood to argue, he would have pointed out that whatever a man's ancestors had done or not done a thousand years ago; persecuting his descendants was unlikely to change the outcome of events. As it was, he took a moment to calculate the odds. He looked around for Karim, but the peasant had long since vanished back into the streets from which he had materialised.
The crowd was a mix of Syrian Christians and Muslims, with a few brave Frankish pilgrims spicing up the mix. The attackers looked like rich Jerusalem natives to Malik. They were all young, all male and all armed. There were five of them. The crowd numbered more than twenty, and it expanded with every moment. The citizens of Jerusalem had always appreciated spectacle; the bloodier the better. The old Jew was the greatest show in town.
Malik drew his knife and eased his way through the crowd towards the fight. He encountered no resistance save for the occasional elbow in the ribs from frustrated onlookers who must have assumed that he was edging forwards either for a better view or to participate himself. When Malik was close enough that he could smell the blood in the air he cut the purse neatly from the belt of the richest and fattest bystander. His Assassin blade severed purse-strings as easily as it parted flesh, and the purse dropped to the floor. Malik sheathed his knife, bent down and picked it up. The pouch was heavy as a ripe plum and full of coins. Malik tucked it into the sleeve of his robe and waited for his target to realize that he had been robbed.
The rich man did not even notice. His cheeks were flushed; his attention firmly fixed upon the fight.
Malik slipped further back in the crowd and selected a plump veiled matron for his second victim. He took a little more time to divest the lady of her belongings, moving clumsily enough that the lady would notice that she had been robbed, but not clumsily enough that she would blame Malik for the robbery.
She screamed like a hawk just as he slipped the purse into his sleeve. "Robbed! I've been robbed!"
Oh, how generous thou art, God, Malik thought ironically. He edged away and made a show of checking his own empty purse to avoid suspicion.
"My money's gone!" cried Malik's first victim. He held up the freshly-severed purse-strings as evidence. His complaint was so loud that it drowned out the panting of the attackers and the agonized gasps of the old Jew. "We have a thief in our midst!"
Malik saw the young men turn away in surprise. He watched as the old Jew clutched at his side and staggered away into the relative safety of the midwinter shadows. He judged it diplomatic to make a slow retreat about the time the first attacker drew his sword, cursing. A pair of them made a show of searching along the alleys for the Jew, but he had vanished and they returned disappointed, swinging their bejewelled swords at empty air. Many of the spectators had already begun to drift into the church.
Malik followed them, partly out of curiosity and partly out of caution. He had never been inside a Christian church before.
It was not what he had expected. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre reminded Malik of a fortress, with thick walls and narrow windows. A forest of massive columns supported the roof. The Christians had built as if they had expected their church to last forever. Fragments of much older buildings were incorporated into the walls next to the rocks of the hillside. Somebody had carved crosses in the stone. A lattice of lamps dangled overhead on thin chains. Through the network Malik caught a glimpse of the inside of a domed roof with a round hole in the centre. Somebody had painted the rays of the sun in gold around the aperture. A convenient entrance, should I ever have the need.
He thought that the opening must be inconvenient when it rained. Muslims at least had the sense to build their mosques without holes in the roof. But the church was as colourful as a mosque, its walls tattooed with paintings of the kind not permitted by Islam. Candlelight danced on the gilded wings of angels and gleamed from the burnished armour of muscular, lance-wielding saints.
Malik took a place amongst the standing crowds at the back of the church. He leant against a pillar and listened as the priest expounded a sermon in badly accented Latin to the crowds.
The church was far busier than he had expected. The whole congregation gossiped throughout the sermon. Malik used the time to collect snatches of conversation. How Saladin' brother al-Adil had been spurned by his favourite concubine. How Conrad of Montferrat had paid for a feast of three peacocks. How the Assassins had stolen the Grail of legend from Solomon's temple, and were using it as a cup to drink the blood of Christian children.
Malik rolled his eyes and noticed as he did so a pair of Frankish knights kneeling in penitence with their sword-hilts on their shoulders. He pulled his hood over his face and drew back into the shadows. The Crusaders were not all Templars, but they had little reason to love the Assassins.
Malik watched the rest of the ceremony from the shadows. The priests were gaudily clothed in silk, their clothes shining in sharp contrast to the rest of the congregation. The church was thronged with thin-faced Christians in patched robes. The crowd was ragged and gaunt with a collective look of poverty that made even the children's faces wrinkled like old men. Malik guessed that desperation drove them into the uncertain embraces of the gods.
He wondered again what Al Mualim was thinking. Altaïr's quest, though undoubtedly effective, had destabilised the political situation even further. The people were starving.
And then the singing began and he stopped thinking at all.
Malik was not easily impressed by such things. The Assassins did not sing hymns, and Al Mualim did not encourage music. This song soared up to the rafters. Malik could not make out words, only a voice as pure as honey. The people around him tipped back his heads and sang along. Malik knew that the unity was merely a facade, like bright hangings over crumbling stone. He had heard many stories of the rival factions' clergymen brawling in the aisles. But for one moment the music allowed him to grasp what Al Mualim held as an ideal. Peace, in all things.
The music soared like an eagle's flight as Malik thought of the Creed. Stay your Blade from the flesh of an innocent, he thought. Hide in plain sight. Protect the Brotherhood. Those are all worthy aims. But that Al Mualim should say that nothing is true and everything is permitted-that worries me. I had thought that the Assassin tenet frees us from the feudal obligations that keep the peasants in their place, nothing more. But-
But a man might justify any actions with such words.
He looked around at the starving, war-scarred faces of the men and women that surrounded him.
The Jerusalemites are not my brothers. My allegiance is only to the Assassins. All I can give these people is a slightly faster death than they would otherwise have found.
And yet...even Altaïr begins to doubt the wisdom of the old man's words. I can see it in his face each time he visits.
Al Mualim has no intention of helping these people. He does not seek peace. He is merely using us to eliminate his opponents. Altaïr is the old man's blade - and the Assassins are his army.
Malik cursed softly. The man in front of him looked around in surprise and then turned away, leaving Malik alone in the crowd with his increasingly uneasy thoughts.
I have no wish to challenge Al Mualim. Let Altaïr do what he likes. I want no part in it. I am just a lowly foot soldier.
But in his heart, he knew that he would have refused to perform the leap of faith for his old master. Jerusalem had broken something deep inside his soul. It hurt nearly as badly as losing his arm. Which was worse, losing your faith, or a limb?
Malik worried at the question like a dog with a bone until the singing ended. His doubts left him shaken and anxious. The crowds seemed suddenly too confining. The incense stung his eyes. Malik pushed through the tightly packed crowd towards the doors and slipped from the church. He needed air. He needed space to think. He needed the quiet of the Bureau. He'd light a brazier in the garden and watch the night give way to dawn. Maybe by then he would have come to a decision. Was Altaïr right? Or Al Mualim?
It was a little better in the open. The cool air cleared Malik's head. He pulled his cloak around him and put the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to his back. Troubled by his thoughts, he hardly noticed the small group of soldiers before they turned to bar his way. "Halt. A word-"
Malik stopped, throwing off his thoughts far too late. A chill ran down his spine as he realised that he was already surrounded. He took a step backwards, towards the safety of the church walls, and nearly bumped into a shield. "What seems to be the problem?"
The soldiers drew back slightly. Malik allowed himself to exhale until he realised that they were only making room for their captain to confront him. The man was young, around Malik's own age, with an impressive moustache and a sabre that was, to Malik's relief, still sheathed. He decided to choose words as his own weapon. "Have you nothing better to do?"
The captain shook his head. "Malik al-Sayf?" he asked.
Malik nodded. There was no use denying his identity. If the guards were confident enough to stop him in the street, it was certain that they already knew who he was. "What do you want?"
"Can I trust you for the truth?" asked the captain.
Yes, Malik thought, but you may not want to. "Certainly."
The captain jerked his head over his shoulder. Malik followed his gaze and saw with a sinking heart the capering, wizened figure of the beggar who had refused his coins and identified him as the Assassin he was. "This man accuses you of bribery."
Malik shrugged. "Almsgiving is a custom of mine."
"I know the zakat," the captain said. "This man calls you a spy."
"The beggar lacks his wits." Malik snapped. "My lord, I am a bookseller. Ask anyone. My shop is well known."
The captain searched Malik's face as intently as if he could read all of his intentions written there. "Men," he said at last to his soldiers, "do any of you know this man? Is it true what he says?"
Malik was glad to see two men give hesitant nods, but not as glad as he was to see the captain's hand move from the hilt of his sabre. "Very well," the captain said. "Then I know where to find you, and-"
The old beggar's quavering voice split the air. "Liar!" he shrieked, and jabbed a gnarled finger at Malik. "This man makes fools of you all. The other beggars-they tell him things. Me-I am loyal to our great Saladin. I tell him nothing. I refuse his coin-"
The captain's eyes narrowed. He fixed Malik with a stare like an arrowhead. "Is this true?" he demanded.
Malik wondered whether there was anything that he could possibly say that would not end, at best, with him being dragged to Saladin's dungeons in chains. "Why would I bribe a beggar?"
"Because it's cheap," one of the soldiers suggested. He earned an unfriendly look from the captain, who said "You don't look like a man who gossips to beggars."
"It's just talk," Malik said.
The beggar laughed wildly. "He's an Assassin!" he accused.
It was enough. Malik wished, not for the first time, that Assassins were permitted to kill civilians as the guards closed in around him in a tight knot. Saladin's troops might hate the Franks, but they hated Assassins more. He thanked providence that he had not been posted to Acre as he held out his mutilated left arm. The Acre Franks would not have stopped to ask him questions. "How could I be an Assassin? I cannot-" He paused before he said "climb walls" and said instead, "I cannot even wield a blade."
This argument did not seem to convince the guards. "Didn't the Assassins kill Yusuf al-Asad?" one said.
"They certainly killed the slave trader Talal," the captain said grimly. He glared at Malik. "You'll come with us. We have some questions." The look in his eyes said that they would not be easy to answer.
Malik tensed, shifting his stance as he readied himself for battle. There were four guards surrounding him, five including the captain. He began to lower his right hand, very slowly, towards the hilt of his blade. The soldiers had not yet noticed that Malik wore a double-edged blade rather than the much more common single-edged eating knife, but they would notice soon enough. His hand touched the rough wooden hilt.
A rock bounced from the helmet of the nearest soldier. The captain's eyes slid away from Malik in surprise. Malik nearly buried his dagger in the captain's throat then and there, but something held him back.
"Have Saladin's troops lost their honour?" a reedy voice demanded. "Have the streets of Jerusalem so little crime that her guards must prevent men from earning their bread?"
The ragged figures approaching looked as if they had never worked a day in their lives. Malik recognised a few faces, smeared by grime or scabs, or half-hidden under tattered blankets. They were not exactly Assassin informants, but they had all taken Malik's coin in return for a few words on troop movements, or the position of scaffolding erected for building work in the bishop's palace. Their intervention was as wholly unexpected as a snowfall in Jerusalem, but to Malik, far more welcome. He recognised the peasant Karim at the back of the crowd. The man gave him a nervous grin.
The captain cleared his throat. "This man-" he began, but got no further.
"This man gives alms every week and asks us nothing in return," shouted the old beggar woman who Malik had approached earlier in the evening.
"It's charity," Malik said smoothly, "For thanks that I have been able to maintain an honest living despite my mutilation."
The captain looked unconvinced. "There's not a man in Jerusalem who gives money to beggars and wants nothing for it. What sort of idiot gives away free money?"
"Thank the Lord there are truly charitable men left in this world!" Karim called.
Malik stepped back and to the side, out of the reach of the guards' sabres and around the soldier who had sidled up behind him. He looked around for the old beggar who had accused him, but the man had sensed the way the tide of opinion was turning and vanished into Jerusalem's dark streets. "These citizens all vouch for me. Your men know my shop. As you said before, you know where to find me."
The captain looked around. "Where's that old beggar?"
"He's run off," Malik said. "I told you the man was mad."
The captain sighed. "Very well," he conceded. "I'll seek you out should I have need of you. And don't let me see you around this district again. Whatever these men say, you are a long way from the Street of the Booksellers."
"You won't see me at all," Malik promised.
"Don't let me catch you," threatened the soldier. "Now get going."
Malik needed no prompting. He walked back to the Bureau, not trusting his frozen hands to bear him amongst the rooftops. He walked past the huddled forms of beggars, past the gaping doorways of abandoned houses, past the scars of siege. By the time he had reached the Bureau he knew what he must do. If Al Mualim would not help, then he must, or failing that, he should.
He unlocked the Bureau door, entered and barred it behind him. It took a few attempts to light the brazier but soon he had it smouldering away, casting a dull red light over the shabby office with its piles of neatly inked maps and the jar of eagle feathers on the counter.
After a while the door to the garden creaked open.
Malik was not surprised to see Altaïr in the doorway. He looked unsure of his welcome, which was also unsurprising. "Safety and peace, Malik," he said.
"Altaïr," Malik said. "Welcome." He sighed. "We need to talk."
Finis.
"A Song of Ascents, of David.
I rejoiced with those who said to me,
"Let us go to the house of the Lord,"
Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem...
There the thrones for judgement stand, the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, "May those who love you be secure,
May there be peace within your walls
And security within your citadels."
For the sake of my brothers and my friends, I will say, "Peace be within you."
- Psalm 122. (edit)
"One prayer in Jerusalem is worth five hundred elsewhere,"
-Muslim Proverb.