AN: New favorite word is screaking. Favorite activity is tearing open old wounds, but that's not new at all. This chapter reflects the fic's original goal, which was to take select elements-with-potential out of Bowdenverse and…make them better. I don't know if it succeeds or if it's all just become a giant bloody soap opera, but either way I'm having fun.
The Alamin
To escape Al Masyaf with a child is no simple task, Raed is fast discovering.
The path to the river is narrow and slippery, and this late into the fracas it's deserted as well. What villagers could reach it have already fled, and Abbas's men—Altair's men, even if they've forgotten—know it well themselves. It is surely being watched. The men stationed on the cliffs across the river, who can say just where their arrows will land?
Raed therefore ignores it, keeping to the village's edges, arms tight around his all-important bundle. The son of his son's savior must be kept safe. Assassins work in the dark to serve the light, and it is light he guards today.
There are other ways down to the water, including some no ordinary villager would be able to manage. The one Raed decides on requires him to go back inside the fortress gates, a difficult task when the battle is going so poorly. He uses all the skills of an informer to keep himself unseen: not invisible, for a man trying to be invisible is often the most conspicuous of all, but overlooked. Unnoticed. Unimportant.
Once he enters the main courtyard he keeps his cowl up and his sword away, strange as it feels to walk into contested territory unguarded. The men he has with him do the same. The swaddled baby he covers loosely with a scrap of cloth torn from a body. Hopefully the boy will stay asleep, for they're lost if he starts to cry. Raed's men will protect him, he knows that without doubt even in a day that has brought the repeated heartbreak of betrayal. But he also knows that Grandmaster Altair's rule is no longer a given in here. The fighters he passes are masked assassins, or mercenaries guffawing as they search out and slaughter the wounded who lie scattered across the cobblestones. Raed does not have enough men.
He lets the tension fall from his shoulders…he is nothing, he is the background, he is only another man passing his fellow traitors by. From inside the fortress come occasional shouts, as Abbas's turncoats mop up the resistance. He doesn't attack, not even to save his injured Brothers. It gnaws to leave the bastard mercenaries at their work, though there isn't a choice. Everything is permitted but still it feels like cowardice and he mutters a quick snatch of prayer under his breath: let there be vengeance, let there be a reckoning, later if not now, let the memory of the Brotherhood become the memory of this vileness and the disgrace done to his Brothers in the courtyard. Let them feel no pain.
Perhaps there is some grand scheme at work here. Perhaps Grandmaster Altair will rally the Order as he has done so many times before. There is something unnatural about the Master, it's true, and it wouldn't surprise Raed to see the shadows spit him out into the fortress fully formed, a ghost-thing able to withstand impossible odds, come to claim revenge.
Perhaps the Grandmaster really is invincible. But perhaps will not guarantee the safety of Dai Malik's son.
There is a winding trail across the courtyard, and then a ladder. It's no small feat to climb a ladder with a baby in his arms, but he manages. The ladder leads to a wide, round room, with a lip of stone running close beneath the high ceilings. Usually there are guards but today those guards are elsewhere. There is also another ladder, and again Raed begins to climb. The walls have been cut open here and there along the stone walkway, and wooden planks installed. The wood is stained with weather and bird droppings, half-hidden under hay scattered to allow for a better grip. The wind is impatient up here; it snaps at the mounted flags and tugs the cowl from Raed's head. The clouds race in a sky much closer than before. Tazim stirs underneath his blanket.
Raed's men climb up after him. "What now?" one of them says.
He nods his head at the wooden ledges. Below them hay is stacked in soggy clumps on a scrap of cliff sticking out from the wall. Even farther below is the river, but here it is angry, the water rushing and white-faced, pricked with rapids swirling about stones. Rather than attempt to swim it with a child in his arms, Raed looks for the beam bridge: literally a beam, not as wide as an average man's foot, set on the cliff near the hay and stretching high across the river. From that side an assassin may choose any one of a dozen paths, some which lead through the mountains, some which lead back to Masyaf. It will be easy, from that side, to disappear.
"You'll jump as you are?" says the assassin, gesturing at squirming Tazim. "It won't be easy."
"It has to be done. All of you, jump." And they do, his three Brothers, springing off the ledges into the hay. It's an infamously difficult jump, with awkward angles and limited space; many a man has broken his leg or wrist, and once someone missed the cliff entirely. The water moves so swiftly here that his body was never found. It was from this perch that Altair set off to trick Robert de Sablé, dropping an avalanche of logs on the Templar's head.
Raed waits to see the last assassin clamber clear of the hay, and then he tucks Tazim more firmly into his arms and leaps himself. It is the boy's first Leap of Faith. God willing it won't be his last.
The hard landing robs Raed's breath and Tazim is dismayed by the sudden drop, not to mention the prickling hay. He sets to wailing, continues even as Raed sits up and tries to shake the hay out of the boy's clothing, and the cliffs pounce upon the noise, tossing its echoes up into the air.
With an indrawn breath Raed looks up at the ledges. Sure enough, the echoes were a beacon. There are two—no, three, and more on the way—masked assassins clustered up there now, pointing down and shouting.
"Go," Raed shouts to his men. "Cross the ledge, hurry."
"They'll catch us on the cliffs," someone says. "It's a steep climb no matter which path you take, and with a baby…"
Raed tosses solutions in his head. He cannot fail Dai Malik, not in this: he would be without honor, he would be without redemption. A host of descendants are watching him now, his and Malik's, weighing him, seeing how worthy is this ancestor. The promise of the future is bawling in his arms and it must be saved.
But to leave one man behind to fight back an onslaught, a mission that is almost certain death: how can he choose to sacrifice one of his own? Many times in Raed's life other, greater men have done his duty for him. No longer. No more.
"Here," he says, and pushes the squirming bundle into the arms of the nearest man. The assassin jumps, surprised, and starts to protest. Raed cuts him off. "Take whatever path will get you away from Masyaf fastest. Hide somewhere secure, and wait for word. Don't trust anything you hear lest it comes from the Grandmaster's mouth himself."
"Yes, but…"
"Remember your mission! Remember the Creed! The innocent must be protected."
"And you will meet us there?"
"I will meet you there," Raed says. "Move!"
The three of them do, running nimbly over the beam, vanishing behind a jutting crag, a dash of red in the brown landscape soon swallowed up. Tazim's crying trails after, one last farewell, the baby announcing his displeasure with as much gusto as his father might. Tazim is without doubt Dai Malik's son.
Raed turns to the hay piles, where the first of his attackers is shifting back onto his feet. His sword is heavy in his hands, after all the years as an informer carrying an informer's lighter weapons. To stave off the creeping doubt he charges…
The first man greets him with a clash of steel as they parry swords; the edge scrapes against Raed's knuckles, and there is a quick sting and dotted blood. It drips from his hand to the sword, down along the handle and the hilt. He grabs for the assassin, yanks him off his feet and then thrusts him backwards. The man smacks into the cliff wall, his back first and then his head on the ricochet. While he is stunned Raed stabs the sword into his guts.
He whirls to face the rest. "Traitors," he says, and traitors, his sword sings, and he tries to deal them justice, one by one. One by one and it seems they pour down the ladder, or else stand above on the ledges shooting arrows and throwing knives. He uses one man as a shield for a bit, lets the arrows gather in his stomach and side while he works his way towards the beam, trying to get out of range. Men fall at his feet, groaning and clutching, but everything is permitted. If they would forget their promises, then so shall he!
Raed is at the beam now, his feet brushing the wood, but there is a man close behind and he's afraid he might be pushed off into the far-below. He turns, nicks the man across the chest, feints left and stabs right, cutting more clothing than flesh for his trouble. His feet sense the precarious position, the wind wailing where there should be ground, and dance to keep away from the edge. The attacker swears something, swears his name—Raed starts, staring at the deep-set eyes above the grey mask, the few black hairs that fall across the forehead—that voice like gravel under a rolling cart—
"Nasr?" he says, in disbelief.
A friend from childhood, not a best friend, but still a comrade. They sat at the same table and fought the same straw dummies. They bowed together before Al Mualim. "Nasr," he says again, using his wrist gauntlet to fend off the back edge of the man's sword. "You of all people have no excuse for this, you of all…!"
The whine of the arrow distracts him but it never reaches its target. Instead bad aim sends it nicking into Nasr's shoulder. Out of pure instinct Raed grabs him before the impact can toss him right off the mountain. The two steady each other, more grapple than hug, and blink almost in unison. Nasr looks shamefaced.
Then another arrow whines. Out of pure instinct, this time Raed ducks.
Nasr's whole face is dismantled by the arrow head, mashed into something not Nasr at all. The mask sinks into the wound and becomes one with its wearer. Raed takes a step to the side, in shock, brushing off the man's fingers which still stretch for his own. Nasr crumbles…
And the earth underneath Nasr, floury dirt on top of rock the wind has scoured for a thousand years, crumbles also.
Raed swings his arms, a buffoonish picture, but there is no muscle to the earth anymore, nothing solid, only wind and water-breeze. To fall is no longer an option. So he falls.
Assassins, of course, are trained to jump. He tries to tell his mind that this is one. The water is frothy in its haste, which might make the landing softer, but in every high Leap of Faith there is one clear moment through the fog where all technique is useless and there's nothing to do but hope for God. Unlike most assassins, Raed has always believed in Him: in a vague, blurry concept of Him, anyway. He wonders if it will help.
Like a cat the informer twists and arches, mind cool with the sheer distance he has to go. He cannot open his mouth to breathe but the wind runs down his throat. The tears wrenched from his eyes feel frozen. Still, he sees not the river coming at him but other, kinder sights…
He sees himself at his son's betrothal last month. It had been a bright moment, full of joy. Out of Raed's three sons only this one, the youngest, has decided not to join the Order, but there is no shame in that choice. He is a smart lad, good with people, good with numbers: his dream is a better, peaceful dream, one of farmland and flocks. His bride-to-be is a dutiful woman, modest, shy, but with eyes that spark when unamused. A layer of strength is good in women, Raed thinks. It's no easy life for weak ones. He pictures his own wife, of a similar nature, with something tough beneath the soft stuff, and he smiles.
His family is safe, he saw to that, and as they fled Masyaf his wife did not beg him to follow, because she knows his role. She is the best kind of assassin's wife, hardy and clever, no stranger to sorrow. And she was wearing a purple scarf that framed her pretty face…
Strange, the things a person thinks, and the time there is to think them, during such a fall. A fall that lasts seconds and a year.
The water is closer closer closer and then it is there.
Cold, his mind screams, and, Too dark! There is sound before anything else, because it follows him even as his sight dissolves into green-black spots, so he hears the hissing laughter of the river before he feels its pull on his lungs, and the crunch of his shattered arm before he feels the pain.
Somehow he flounders his way to the surface, nauseous, about to retch. Pain crackles down his right arm, which floats limp in the water as if trying to separate itself from the rest of him. The current tears at him, shoving him along. He hangs half-aware and lets it. No shouts from above, they must assume him dead…and finally his knees scrape rock and he is tossed upon the shore.
Perhaps at least the river will not betray its own.
No one has ever counted the exact number of caves that dot the cliffs across from Masyaf. Some are slivers and some enormous, some impossible to reach and some only steps from the beach. One sits in front of Raed where he's washed up, a tiny one where the cliff-side has been worn into a shell by the elements. He drags himself along with his good arm and weak knees, soaked and shaken, the dirt underneath him turning to mud. The impact broke more than just his arm; his whole body is bruised and torn. His cowl and sash are gone. Half the river is compressed between his ears.
When most of the sky is hidden behind rock Raed collapses. Aches such as he's never experienced before shake his frame. His mouth stings where his lips are sliced, his throat burns and there is the taste of gluey, brackish water on his tongue. He touches his face with his hand, his cut and bleeding face with the bristles of his beard stiff with river grime. Alive? Alive and in a shredded whole?
He vomits, once, then with a gasped curse lies winded in the mud.
After a while breath comes back to him, though if anything the pain is worse, and he sits up. His arm is so misshapen it hurts to look at it, and only three fingers move when he tries closing his fist. What kind of an assassin will he be without his sword arm? Raed strains to hear sounds from Masyaf but if they come the river overwhelms them. Little it matters now, he is too weak to fight…even the act of closing his eyes might be beyond him…he slumps, drops his bad hand, but his lacerated palm bangs against wood instead of ground.
Raed summons the strength from somewhere to lift his head and look.
Someone has buried a wooden trunk in the shadows of this cliff. The wood isn't bloated from the moisture in the air, nor cracked from the heat, so it hasn't been here long. It's also a hastily-dug hole, shallow enough that Raed dragging himself past was enough to uncover the top corner.
Every muscle has to be wrestled with, but eventually Raed gets himself onto his knees. In the process he jostles his arm and groans. Oh, to lie down and ignore this. He is so tired. He hurts so badly. His family and Dai Malik's son are out of the village, so he has kept his promise. Surely no one would begrudge him if he dozed.
Instead he shifts earth with his good hand until enough of the trunk lid is uncovered that it can be opened. He pats himself down until he finds a dagger tied tight enough to his leg that the river couldn't steal it away, and picks the lock one-handed after a minute's work.
What's inside is so obvious he almost doesn't recognize it for what it is. It explains everything, the mêlée in Masyaf and the rupture of the Order. It leeches all astonishment. In the face of it he quite forgets his broken arm.
"Oh," Raed says, "Oh, I must show this to the Master, to Lord Malik, to everyone. Oh," he says, "of course…"
-i-
"Malik, oh wow," says Kadar, happily. "I've missed you a lot." And then the creature swings out with one of those clawed hands and scratches him across the face.
Every part of the world is delayed for Malik, smothered in tar, the sunlight sluggish like the air has become viscous and it must first wade through. He sees the blow coming and yet his limbs won't move. He can only watch dumbly as the claws twitch for him and then stumble back in a bright little explosion of pain once they land. His cheek and forehead bleed, blood welling along the bridge of his nose.
Somewhere, elsewhere, Altair bellows in inarticulate rage and storms forward. The air for him has not turned white-rancid, nor solid like old milk. He is not held captive by shock.
Abbas hovers on the brink of that somewhere-else. His face is still ashen with bewilderment, but he sees Altair lunging for his throat and knows enough to use the Apple as a shield. It beams its golden light and grips the Son of None fast, pulling his feet right off the ground. For just a moment the Kadar-thing flickers. Altair thrashes a bit, coattails flapping in the windless sky, promising all manner of death and destruction upon Abbas's skull. But he's faced off against the Apple before. He knows better than to waste his energy trying to pry free from the treacherous thing.
Malik, at his resinous reserve, one hand to his bleeding face, observes this all through clouded glass. The Apple has gone too far, just as he knew it would: it has tilted the world off its axis entirely. Feel how it slows one second, then speeds the next! Everything is wrong. He cannot catch his breath!
The djinni sways with him, back and forth. It giggles in time to Altair's cursing, pulling the scratchy sound from the bottom of a half-collapsed throat. It's Kadar's laugh from childhood, from the desert, rare thing that it was then…the both of them dehydrated, desperate thirst making the younger brother rasp. "Where are we going?" he said then, in his hoarse little boy's voice. "I'm hungry. I trust you."
"It's been a ton of time since you saw me," says the Kadar-thing today, and Malik cringes though it's said nothing wrong. It sounds as Kadar should. Malik is more afraid of the longing shredding through his chest than he is of the creature giggling with his blood under its nails. It isn't real, a small part of his brain insists. How can it be real? This weapon is made of illusions, he knows that, he's been witness to such tricks before. The Apple takes imagination and turns it concrete, but no ghost can take Kadar's place. You know he's dead, this part of his brain screams. You were there! You watched it happen! You know you'll never bring him back.
But that part of Malik's mind, the sober part, the part of him that is Dai of Jerusalem, is drowned out by the frantic prayers of the rest. It is a world of mystery, and who knows what the Apple has at its core? It looks like Kadar, doesn't it? It sounds like Kadar, doesn't it? It calls his name and reaches for him and doesn't he know its smile?
"Little brother?" he breathes, and starts to shiver in the face of the thing's delight.
"Enough," Altair snarls—to the djinni as much as Abbas. And isn't that proof, then, that the thing is real? If Altair will talk to it? Isn't that what it means? "You'll never control the Apple of Eden. You'll be consumed again. My men will..."
Ali says from his rooftop perch, "Your men are dead, or about to be. Even now they see you here and keep their distance."
"The Apple wasn't meant for you!"
"Who was it meant for? Are you so much better than we?" Ali calls to Abbas, "You're using it, aren't you? It's obeying you. See? Master, you have always been Altair's equal."
Abbas bloats with a stunned and manic pride. "Yes," he says, almost wheezing it, "Yes, I am, I am." He jabs his finger in Altair's face: "You're not so great, half-breed. I, I've always said you were overrated." Altair looks back at him with a face like chiseled stone.
Malik blinks once and forgets them.
The Kadar-djinni says, "I really missed you."
"I…I also…"
"Nuh uh, you couldn't have," it says playfully. "I waited years an' years. Never saw you."
He feels he should grovel before this forgiving ghost, and if he doesn't it's only because he's lost all feeling in himself. "I, you…I lost you. If there'd been any way, I—I would have walked my legs to stumps to find you, Kadar, I swear."
"Probably a good thing you didn't. You don't need more stumps."
Something is wrong. Malik tries to focus on the undercurrent of cruelty, which is so antithetic to the Kadar who was once alive. "Little brother," he says again, and reaches out his arm.
The djinni steps out of his grasp. Its legs move wrong, sideways and backwards, the bones creaking and bulging, a hideous sight. "Y'know," it says, "I knew I'd see you eventually. Even if you'd forgotten."
"I never forgot you, Kadar. I could never. But you were killed-…"
"Forgot, forgot, forgot," it sings. "Left me in that hole. 'S'ok. I get it. Maybe I'd forget too, if I got to be the alive one, with warm air and food and people admirin' me. You're really important in the Order now, right? And everyone feels so bad for you."
It gives a theatrical shiver. "Not warm in Solomon's Temple. You'd think it would be but I was frozen for ages waiting for you. It was worth it, though, since I knew you'd come. 'Cause you always looked for me before."
"Kadar—"
"But you're so busy now, Altair needs you. I got you long enough, right? Seventeen years and then…"
"Kadar, stop it!"
"Then they ran a sword through me!" It mimes choking itself, crosses its eyes and laughs. "I don't blame you, Ahki, you did what you could. It was only a promise, and who doesn't make and break a dozen of those in a week? But it really hurt. You know, it still does!"
Malik doesn't hear himself groan, but maybe he does. Abbas deflates a bit, looking over at him with uneasy eyes, his hand clenched around the pulsing orb. Is he hearing whispers? Are white hands guiding him along? It holds him prisoner as much as it holds the Grandmaster.
And the Grandmaster is furious. "Don't talk to it, Malik," he barks over his shoulder. "It's a goddamn illusion. Ignore it!"
The creature says, "But you'll stay with me now, right? Don't go away again."
"I won't, I won't," Malik whispers.
'"Course you won't. You're so loyal."
Ali says to Abbas, "Yaallah! Kill them both quickly, while they're distracted."
Abbas says back, in a quavering voice, "I…I don't know…if that's really Kadar A-Sayf then this, this is against God's will…"
"You are His will! He wields His power through you. Strike them down, be his judgment!"
"Ignore it, Malik."
Malik, still wading through clay air, is helpless to respond. "He's jealous," says the creature, shrugging, although only one lumped shoulder moves. "He's jealous 'cause he wants to fuck you but he also wants to be the only one who gets to talk to me."
"Shut up," orders Altair. "You are a tool, a weapon, nothing more, you aren't real. Don't talk to him."
"Yep, still jealous, for years and years. Gosh, Altair's so grumpy, don't you think? But so amazing. We love him, don't we? He gets to use the Apple even when he's not holding it. He never wanted to tell you, 'cause then he'd have to tell you about me. Brother? Why do you look so upset?"
Altair shouts, "I said shut up!"
"We definitely love him," the djinni decides. "That's why you serve under him, even though he killed me, even though he ruined you, even though he turned you into his—well, you know. Heh. He could do anything to you."
"Altair didn't kill you," Malik says faintly.
"No? It was him and it was you. I don't care, really, Malik, I totally understand. Novices are expendable. You've always known what to do and you knew just what to do then. Saved your own neck. And his, kinda. Just not mine. So brave!"
It smiles, stretching its lips, grinding its teeth. It is not an expression Kadar ever wore. "It's so honorable of you. He sees me all the time, and he never tells you, and you have no idea. Poor Malik! Fuck, you're so stupid, how did you ever survive that first Templar attack? Your brother should've been eaten by wolves. Maybe he was, and you too. Maybe you're dead!"
"End this," says Altair to Abbas, spitting his words, thrashing again in his cage of yellow light, "you have me and that's what you wanted, so end this charade if you have any scrap of honor left."
Abbas turns slow, staggered eyes on him. "You speak to me of honor? My God, is what it's saying true?"
Malik closes his eyes. Blood pounds in his ears in a ceaseless moan. "If I am dead, then you are a dream."
"No dream," the thing shrieks at him, "no dream but a bad one! All you've fought for and what do you have? The Son of None is a liar. Those who came before want better men. Your idiot brother died drowning in his blood. You watched!"
Ali nudges the archer at his side to fire his bow, but the man is dumbstruck and shaking. Ali wrinkles his nose in distaste, but he has only a sword on him and wait for the tableau to play out. Not that he matters. Even Altair and Abbas are far-off curses, trickling in from whatever planet they're on.
"Well? Are you deaf as well as dumb, my lord?" The Kadar-djinni's wet eyes bulge from its face, distorting the placid features into a rage they never knew. The voice skews upwards even beyond Kadar's usual youthful tones. "I'm telling you that the Son of None has not changed and never will. He isn't yours, mortal! He is ours, we claim him." It leans toward him, panting, spittle flying. "It hurts when he talks to me," it says, "it hurts to be here, make him stop bringing me here. You watched!"
Dai Malik answers the djinn. The rest of Malik is somewhere else, screaming.
"Then I will have to watch again," says the Dai, in his coldest voice, and reaches for a throwing knife. Too late he remembers he's long since run out.
"I trust you, Ahki!" cries the creature, and attacks.
Malik has his sword but can't bring himself to raise it against that face, Kadar's distorted face, he can't bear to see it spitting blood and bile a second time. The creature fights with no artistry or decorum but with a fearsome strength. He parries its blows for a second, two seconds, and then steps badly and wavers. The djinni punches him in the face with more than a grown man's strength, rakes him across the shoulder with its claws, grabs him, kicks him, and hurls him clear across the roadway.
A bunch of crates stacked next to a building break his fall. They crash down around and on top of him, splinters flying, ears overwhelmed by the clatter, eyes by the dust. An errant piece of wood takes a meaty chunk out of his forearm that stuns him for a moment with pain. His missing arm spasms; there is the panicked thought that it is pinned and he must free it. Sprawled and awkward, half-buried by the rubble, Malik tries to find his breath.
He hears Altair yell. What he won't know until he is told later is that Abbas was distracted by the violence of his own creation and let his grip on the Apple waver. The gold light wavered too, and in that instant Altair burst free, dropped to the ground in the crouch of a feral animal and then was up and springing for Abbas.
Malik pushes himself to a sitting position, dazed. The sounds of pitched battle reach him—but he cannot hear the creature—and then there is a fresh rupture of light and Altair is flung back into view.
To the Son of None's credit he is a hard man to knock down. Again and again he gets to his feet and throws himself at Abbas, trying every angle and every trick, all fangs and claws and the whites of eyes. But to fight as a lone man against a wizard's tool is no easy thing. He did it once, killed Al Mualim, but Al Mualim's arrogance was different than the arrogance of Abbas and Ali Ibn Berkant. Al Mualim liked to pose, to exaggerate, to sermonize. He was confident enough in his own skill that, from what little Altair has said, he didn't use the Apple for the entirety of the fight.
Abbas is delighted that the Apple will yield to him. For him, the voice of the Piece of Eden is the voice of God.
Altair won't realize this. He gets pummeled instead: the Altair of Solomon's Temple, foolishly defiant, throwing himself headfirst into fights he can't finish. It is an Altair Malik thought they both were done with, but the Kadar-creature proved him wrong.
The Apple grabs Altair, tosses him away, into the wall behind Malik, to the right of the broken crates. Altair hits it hard, head-first. This time when the Grandmaster stands up he stumbles, and grimaces, and has to drop to one knee. His hair is matted with freshly pumping blood.
"Altair," says Malik, but has to croak it: there is too much dirt in his lungs. Abbas stands over them, open-mouthed. Ali calls encouragement from the safety of his rooftop. The thing behind them (oh, God, Kadar! trapped and waiting in the Temple!) is salivating and smiling both.
"You've lost," says Abbas, in wonder. "I've beaten the both of you."
Altair snarls at him, incoherent. He still can't get himself steady on both feet. Malik isn't sure he himself is much better. And what is the point of rising, if he will only be knocked down? He looks away from Abbas and then he realizes…Masyaf itself has gone quiet. There are men watching from every roof, every doorway, men in a wide circle peering at this horror show with fright. None of them come forward to help their Master. Malik realizes now, none of them will.
"Al hamdu lillah," breathes Abbas, "Praise Allah, I've won."
"Won nothing," says Altair, but everyone can hear the slur to his words. "You are nothing."
Malik is on his feet. "Abbas," he says, in a voice more sane-sounding than it has any right to be, "this is lunacy. You are an assassin same as we. Same as all the men who've died today because of you. This is a Brotherhood, Abbas, and—"
"Why are you so stupid?" Abbas drops his smile. "Why have you always been so blind? Brotherhood? Assassins? This isn't a Brotherhood, this is a vanity project. A place for men with bigger egos to stamp out the smaller among them, never mind fairness, never mind justice. All those high-minded ideals Al Mualim taught us as children, but the whole time he was out to betray us. And who was his favorite pupil?"
Altair says, slurring worse than ever, "I am not Al Mualim."
"We are lost, Malik," Abbas cries, "as long as we follow the likes of him. Arrogant men, selfish men. I fight for the Creed, not for the whims of someone who would crown himself king."
"You're caught in an old fight," Malik argues. "Altair isn't our enemy."
"You said something different once."
"He was different once."
Abbas cackles. "Oh, yes, your favorite argument. He's changed."
"He has."
"Has he? You see, this, this is what I mean. So blind, no matter what I say. You say you've forgiven him, you say he's changed, you say all is as it's meant to be—but he's spent the last ten years dragging your brother from the grave."
Malik can't help it. He flinches. "No," he says, but has to cut himself off before the word turns into keening.
"That monster is a delusion. I know what the Apple's powers are. It's lying," says Altair.
"Lying, Grandmaster? You've never seen it before? All those times you stare off into space, all the times you talk to yourself like some old man who's lost his head…when you wrote in your book that you wouldn't tell Malik, those are delusions as well?"
Altair is rarely caught so off-guard. He actually blanches. "How…?" he starts, then stares hard at the dirt.
Another voice drops smoothly over his. Malik drags his eyes from the Son of None to see Ali approaching. The frizz-haired man says, a lilt of laughter to his voice, '"I see him more and more. But I won't tell Malik. I won't let him want to leave me.' Lovely words, Grandmaster. Very poetic. Maybe next time you should be more careful with your things. Leaving books lying around for halfwit sons to drop in the middle of the room…anyone could find them after that."
Malik ignores him. He does not care about him. He cares about Altair, and to Altair he says: "He's wrong. You will tell me he's wrong."
Altair locks his jaw and frowns.
"Novice! You will look at me and tell me he's lying. Altair." Malik grits his teeth. "Please."
Abbas says softly, "I've tried to tell you so many times, because we were—we were friends, weren't we? We grew up together. We slept in the same room. I kept trying to get through to you but it was like you were under a spell, like you couldn't hear anyone or anything but him. He was only ever going to hurt you, I told you. That's all he knows how to do! A man beyond men can't understand the ones below him. Even after Kadar died, when for a while it looked like you'd realized, even after that…I don't know why you let him…" He shakes his head. The hand he has wrapped around the Apple of Eden is suddenly very steady.
"I don't understand you, and I'm sorry this is how it's happened. You're a good man despite your, eh, bad judgment. I would offer you a place in the Assassin's Order, the one saved and purged of his filth."
"I wouldn't take it," says Malik, almost inaudible.
"I know. And I won't let him do to the rest of us what he's done to you."
Ali says merrily: "Then there's nothing else to do. Shall we hurry it up? Oh, but thank you for letting me join your Brotherhood!" Malik looks past him, over his shoulder, where the Kadar-djinni stands alone, rocking on its heels, its mere presence scaring the onlookers off. Malik can't imagine anyone being scared of Kadar. He catches the creature's eye. It smiles at him.
Abbas holds the orb high over his head, and it adds a hum to the glow like a nest of disrupted hornets. Streaks of white light ripple the gold, lightening without thunder, the whole thing grows louder, brighter, wider, and Malik thinks to himself that this is overkill for just two men, and grins. How many times has he faced death, though never this death? There is no fear. Only a tired sympathy for Abbas, whose face grows paler the more powerful the Apple grows, for Malik remembers how intrinsically terrible it was to know he had such power. Usually it is a fast weapon, but it is becoming clear that it is actually all weapons: it is different with different men, the better to corrupt them. It will prolong Abbas's agony, angry at being held against its will.
"What are you doing? Kill them already," Ali says over the hum-turning-roar.
"It—I don't think it wants to…" Abbas holds the Apple even higher, overwhelmed; if he could detach his arm from the rest of his body and throw it at them, he probably would. The earth under their feet is beginning to jolt, pebbles jittering, there is the pressure of rushing air and an unnatural heat…and white figures watching, quickly glimpsed…
Malik doesn't look to see what Altair is doing. He keeps his eyes on Kadar and wonders idly if it will hurt.
The air is hot and screaking and—
"Don't!"
A grey-clad assassin drops from the nearest roof and manages to land on Abbas and Ali both. The Apple of Eden goes flying. The Kadar-creature vanishes. Malik, ignoring that the earth has stopped dancing and the light is gone and the world is deathly silent, lunges forward before he can stop himself, crying, "No!"
The novice assassin is small and is thrown off quickly by the grown men he's keeled over. Abbas gets to his knees just in time for Altair to use his head as a springboard. The Grandmaster lands neatly all the way across the road, having kicked Ali along the way. In fact he lands by the Apple, which he scoops up with a vicious grin and drops back into his side pouch. The novice trots after him and says: "Father!"
Altair whirls, a vision of bruises and torn robes. He grabs Darim by both shoulders, so hard the boy winces. "What are you doing here?"
"They said you were fighting down here, they said you were going to lose, I—"
Altair shakes him. Darim has to hold his cowl up to keep it from sliding over his eyes. "Why would you put yourself at such risk? This fight is beyond you. Why didn't you run? Where is your brother?"
"He's out of Masyaf, he's out. When everyone started fighting I made him follow some journeymen out. But I found a sword and, and, and assassins never run when they can fight," he finishes, inspired. Altair loosens his grip, his expression battling between frustration and respect.
"Sef is waiting for you with a bunch of others where it's safe," Darim says. "But I'm not a baby. I wanted to help."
"The son saves the father," Altair says, but the moment he's done speaking his face cramps and he staggers, almost falls entirely but for Darim, who's suddenly carrying almost all his father's weight.
The boy strains to hold him up and looks around in terror. The assassin audience has faded back into the shadows, to parts of Masyaf where the fight continues on. "Uncle Malik?" Darim gasps. "Uncle-?"
"Right here." Malik steps forward quickly, stooping to take the burden. "Help me get his arm around my shoulder, Darim, I can't position him with just the one. Come on, idiot, don't flop around like a hooked fish. Dumb novice. Hah! I saw you grimace at that. If you're alive enough to make faces you're alive enough to stand. If I have to drag your carcass around you're at least going to manage some of your own."
Malik tugs the Master upright in a stream of cursing. Darim doesn't complain as Malik grumbles about the dead weight, because frankly it's an apt description. Altair is no help, lolling semi-conscious, as Darim and Malik wrestle him into a standing position with his arm thrown over Malik's neck.
"There," Darim says, satisfied. "You can bear him now."
Malik keeps his face blank, but he stiffens. And he knows Altair feels it from the way the other man stiffens too. "Come on, let's get out of the road." He leads Altair, Darim following after, to a patch of weeds by the massive wooden walls that ring the village's bottom level. It still isn't safe, but it's hidden from most eyes, and it will take Abbas some time to find them.
"Is he hurt badly, Uncle?"
He's hollow, Malik thinks. He's rotten black and steaming. "He hit his head pretty hard, and besides that he's been a receptacle for a ridiculous amount of arrows. We're both bad off by now."
"Maybe you. I'm fine," Altair mumbles.
"Father, you can't keep your head up."
"Sons don't argue with their fathers."
"But you can't."
"Quiet. Malik, where're…where're Abbas and…?"
"Run off the second you picked up the Apple. They won't go far, though. As soon as they realize you're not using it they'll come back."
"So," Altair says, and manages to keep his head up for a second, though he looks at his son and not Malik, "so I'll use it when they do."
Malik drops him.
Darim lets out a protesting yelp, but all Altair does is roll onto his back as the Dai looms over him. "You will not use it. Do you hear me? It is not your choice."
"Of course it's his choice," Darim says, accusingly. "He's the Grandmaster."
Malik says, still glaring down at Altair, "If he wants to keep his title and his head he will listen to me. Although both are worthless now!" Altair gets himself sitting. Malik kneels down so they can be at eye-level. "Darim," he says without looking at the boy, "Go find us some horses. There should be some still at the stables, last I heard men on our side were holding the gates secure."
"But…"
"Go on."
Darim doesn't dare argue further. Malik waits until he's sure they're alone, or as alone as anyone ever is in this damned nest of spies and sneaks. Then he speaks.
"We are leaving, Altair. Do you hear me? We are rounding up our Brothers and we are going to a safer place."
"Abandon Masyaf? Abandon the Order to that shit? I am the Mster, not Abbas."
"We aren't abandoning anything, idiot. The Brotherhood isn't Masyaf, it's you. It goes where you go. And at the moment you need to go quickly."
"I won't," says Altair. "I won't lose to him."
"Stupid novice, you've already lost."
Malik grabs him by the shoulder, much as Altair had grabbed Darim. But Malik doesn't have to shake him to know his words dig deep. "Listen to yourself!" he says. "Look around! The village is a shambles and you can't even speak without drooling. Abbas has paid off every mercenary for miles, and half of your best fighters are wandering around fucking Izmir. We're tired and outnumbered, we can't win like this."
"I won't."
"Stubborn fool. Look, it's a retreat, not a surrender. We'll go somewhere safe and regroup, send messengers to the city bureaus, get our men together and take stock of what we have. Then we'll come back for Abbas, when we're not fighting from ten steps behind. If we stay here any longer we really will lose for good. If they get their hands on that orb again…"
Altair whines. There's no other word for it. "I can use it. I'll end this right here. Just once, and it will—"
Malik hits him, across the face. Altair tucks his chin to his chest and takes it. "You wretch. You puppet. I know how deeply it controls you but try to clear your head. How will you use it in your condition? The Apple will suck you dry in seconds, Abbas wasn't injured and yet you saw what it did to him! You think he meant to, to bring K—to do what he did? God, for once in your life will you see sense! The Apple isn't a tool, you are, and it is the master. If you touch it, it will destroy you, if I don't destroy you first."
For a long time, Altair is silent. He should be wearing his cowl, Malik thinks, he must want it, but it's been torn off and so there's nowhere for him to hide.
"You want me to run away," he says at last, "like a coward? To let a usurper sit in my stead?"
"Yes," says Malik, "for the sake of your children, and your wife, and we poor, dumb bastards who call you our leader. What, is it so hard? It isn't the first time we've had to humble ourselves. Either of us. As I used to think you knew."
"And what of…all this?"
"The villagers will be fine. Abbas still thinks of himself as an assassin, he won't hurt them. And we've decimated his forces enough that he won't dare leave Masyaf to follow us just yet. We'll get messages around so those who are still loyal know where to go. We'll make a plan. We'll come back."
"It shouldn't be so easy for you to leave your home."
"Masyaf isn't my home. Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
Altair demands, "And what of the grave? The grave in the back garden, does that mean nothing to you either?"
Malik straightens back to his full height, and turns to gaze in the direction of the fortress. Is it his home? Hidden as it is now by buildings and clouds of dust it's almost hard to remember it exists. "Who lives there?" he says quietly. "A king? Allah…?"
His eyes sting. He knows they're wet, but he furrows his brow and shuts them until they dry. Then he looks back down at Altair. "It's an empty grave," he says. "So it's meaningless. It's always been."
Silence. A long stretch of silence between them: it's been there since Solomon's Temple, it's never really gone away. And it's become something only a pickaxe might break through, but Malik doesn't have one and doesn't care to search. He stares off into the distance again. "Darim is coming back with the horses," he says. "It's good, then, the way out is still clear…"
He takes a step past Altair, to meet Darim, but the Son of None grabs him by his ankle, holds him in place. "Do you?" Altair asks.
"Do I what?"
"Do you still call me your leader? Do you…" He is struggling, but Malik is merciless. "Are we still…?"
Malik kneels down again, looks him face-to-face. He says softly, "Why did you never tell me?"
"It wasn't real. It was a side effect. I didn't want you to know."
"Didn't want me to know! And since when are you the one to decide what I should know?"
"I didn't ask to see him. It was not my fault-…no. It was my fault. I saw the Apple's potential and took its visions as its price."
"A price you were happy to pay."
"Not happy. But better me than you, if it would spare you the grief."
Malik laughs, bitterly. "After all you have done I am immune to grief." The laugh turns to a hiss, though, at the end: "You resented Kadar all his life. You led him to his death. You murdered him, and now you won't even let him rest? My little brother, Altair. All I had. Not enough for you that you killed him, that you killed me—you had to desecrate his corpse as well?"
Once he might have taken pleasure in seeing Altair made vulnerable. Today, though, the way the Son of None ducks his head just brings on more disgust. There is still the hand wrapped around Malik's ankle; he pulls the fingers loose. Altair drops both hands into his lap, frowns, presses them into the wilting weed-bed and manages to force himself up. "I'm sorry," he says. "It was never my intent."
"I know. It never was."
"What will you do now?" Altair asks. He does a good job managing a neutral tone, but Malik knows him too well. Altair will always be so confident, even when he falters: he doesn't know what it is to give up hope.
It is something like this:
"I'm not sure," Malik says. "I'll be there to take Masyaf back, because I'm certainly not going to let Abbas keep it. I've more than paid my dues for this Brotherhood. If you don't kill him fast enough I will. After…" He rubs his shoulder, considering. Joints ache and groan all the way down the missing arm. "After I'll probably go back to Jerusalem, for a bit. Perhaps I can stomach serving the Order from there, perhaps not. If not then I'll travel even further, out of the Levant. Take my son and see if there's some part of the world less brutal than this."
"I see," says Altair, without inflection.
"I don't know. It's all been too sudden for serious plans. The one thing I know is that wherever I go, it won't be with you." Malik has never felt so calm, but even so, he looks off towards the fortress again, rather than meet the other man's eyes. There is nothing satisfying in watching Altair try to ignore his distress; Malik knows it now for sure.
"Once we retake Masyaf you stay here and run the Brotherhood. You're the best of all the assassins and you deserve it. But I…I have nothing left to offer you. I can't stay by your side, and I won't try to force it. All those times as children you said only you deserved me and maybe you were right. Maybe I'll be cursed wherever I go. But I remember, Altair, what I said to you in Jerusalem. I meant it then, I mean it now. Abbas is right, about the both of us. And I look forward to knowing you are very far away."
The village lies before him, slope-shouldered and pained. There are still men fighting in its alleyways, on its roofs, but none of those fights are as brutal as this one in the weeds. Malik grinds a flower head under his heel.
Altair says again, "I see."
Then Darim reaches them, leading along two nervous horses. "I spoke to Qadir at the gate," he says. "He says we have to hurry, he's not going to be able to keep the road open for long. But Masyaf's ours. Father? Are we really going to leave?"
"Get on a horse," Altair orders.
So they hurry. Altair won't let anyone help him up, because he's Altair, and Malik won't either, because he's Malik, and Darim takes three tries to climb on behind his father because he's too short still for such a large mount. They turn their backs on Al Masyaf and its fortress, and all its lamented ghosts. Somewhere Abbas is giving thanks to God for victory, with Ali at his side. Somewhere a piece of gold-that-isn't is glowing so fiercely in its wooden cage that its owner flings open the trunk lid, in bewilderment and horror.
"This isn't right!" says the old man. "You said my son would come back! But everyone's killing everyone else in Masyaf, they're dragging themselves here in shreds. It's war from the inside that you've brought us, Brothers killing Brothers, it isn't natural. Where is my son? They said-…" The old man is weeping now, without tears for he is so old they must have dried, but his voice is cracked and wounded with betrayal. "They said there was a dead man down in Masyaf pulled out of the grave, all misshapen and angry and…that wasn't my son, was it? That's not what he'll look like when you bring him back to me. You'll bring him back like he was."
The Shard of Eden doesn't respond. Today it is very busy.
This is what it is to lose hope.