13: The fall of Al Mualim
The second Max returned to Masyaf, her stomach began to churn.
"This is it." She told herself. "This is where I kill Al Mualim." She slowly makes her way back up to the Sanctuary, now rising like a dark beacon above the dusty houses. A figure in white pushes past her in the crowd, and she recognises the gait and follows. As she nears the top of the path, she notices Nudge perched at the top of the cathedral, long dark braid draped over her shoulder. She could puke, she's so scared. What if Al Mualim overpowers her? Sees through the plan and kills her the second she steps through the door? Max guesses she would be happier dying here than at the hands of her family.
Max's feet carry her anyway, and they keep going when Fang breaks out of her line of sight and when Nudge slips behind the cathedral. She forces her twitching hands to still and her heart to stop pounding when she takes her first step into the sanctuary, noting with bitterness that the place looks beautiful with the golden afternoon light streaming through the stonework. She turns to the right, and up the last few stairs, where Al Mualim sits at his chair and sifts through parchments in a beam of the golden sunlight. She approaches the desk with her hands clasped behind her back.
"Have you news for me, Maria?" He asks. His voice is distant, distracted. A sliver of hope pierces her heart.
"Garnier de Naplouse is dead." She replies softly, and he sighs he sighs happily and smiles.
"Excellent! We could not have hoped for a more agreeable outcome." He leans back in his chair and looks at her expectantly. He doesn't seem to suspect a thing, but could he just be teasing her, could this be a trap set up to catch her and Altair? Her find falls back to the thoughts that plagues her after her conversation with dying Garnier.
"And yet..." She starts, and he hurriedly interrupts her.
"What is it?" He pushes himself out of his chair with a speed that makes her jump in her nervous state, and he glares at her for a moment, waving his hand to motion her to speak again.
"The Doctor insisted his work was noble. And looking back, those who were supposedly his captives seemed grateful to the man. Not all of them, but enough to make me wonder. How did he manage to turn enemy into friend?" She asks. She could kick herself, but she needed to know. Both because of the similarities between the doctor and Al Mualim. How could the doctor convince his victims he was helping them, and how did Al Mualim convince her to kill?
"Leaders will always find ways to make others obey them. And that is what makes them leaders. When words fail they turn to coin. When that won't do, they resort to baser things: bribes, threats, and others types of trickery. There are plants, Altair, herbs from distant lands, that can cause a man to take leave of his senses. So great are the pleasures it brings, men may even become enslaved by it." He says, motioning big, lazy circles with his right hand while he looks out the window. He's enjoying this, preaching to her like he used too while she was training. he would speak to her for long lengths of time and she would listen with rapt attention the entire time.
"You think these men drugged, then? Poisoned?" She asks, pretending to be confused and furrowing her brow.
"Yes." He says, turning and nodding his head, eyes and lips pursed. "If it truly was as you described it."
"Herbs, this seems a strange method of control." She drops her shoulder and cocks her head, eyes on the floor but watching his out of her peripheral vision.
"Our enemies have accused me of the same." He says with a stiff tone, and she keeps her body from freezing up. Could he be referring to Fang or the templars? That's exactly what Fang thinks he's doing to control his students.
"The promise of paradise..." She pretends to reminisce. Al Mualim used to tell her the paradise the world would become if they would become independant and begin thinking of themselves. But that paradise wasn't real, and it was unrealistic to hope it would be. When an old elder spoke of the paradise, one of those on the templar council took him seriously.
"They think there's a garden, overflowing with women and pleasure. But I drug you as Garnier did his men and tempt you with its rewards." She could throw up. Is he admitting to tepting her to become someone else with the promise of paradise? Her mind rewinds, he did, he promised she could become free if she joined this guild. Was she getting closer to that with Al Mualim around?
"They do not know the truth of it." She manages to form the words clearly. He nods, turning away from the window and faces her again. He takes a step to stand directly in the center of the flower pattern of the window.
"Which is how it must be." He says with a tone of finality, folding his hands behind his back. At that moment, Fang pulled himself up onto the ledge behind the floods Max's veins.
"But if they knew the truth of it...that all we seek is peace...!" She screams, and Fang raises his fist and shatters the yellow glass of the window, leaping through, hidden blade at the ready. Her scream alerted Al Mualim, who's turned and deflected Fangs attack. Max is frozen, she can't do anything but watch as Fang attacks again and Al Mualim counters and drives him back with a well placed but weak punch to the stomach. Nudge swings up over the ledge and joins the fight, a short sword in her fist.
But she can't move. She doesn't know who to help, Al Mualim, who turned her into the killer and may or may not have brainwashed her into becoming a killer, or Fang, who she really knows nothing about and abandons her when he feels like it. She flexes her wrist and her blade falls between her fingers.
"Then they would not fear us, and we would have no hold over them. Go, it is time you continued with your work."