The Mission
The lurch and drag of it: the proof Malik needs. As long as he focuses on the limbs like beams jutting from rubble and the claws like a wild beast's, he can fight it. As long as he doesn't look at its face.
The creature toys with him awhile, feinting and darting with mad giggles, pretending to flinch away from swings as messy as any novice's. Malik's fighting with his dagger – he doesn't have the strength for the broadsword now, what with his back flayed raw – and every muscle he moves he pays for in waves of acid pain. If this was a real fight he wouldn't have a hope in any hell.
But this isn't a real fight.
Oh, it's happening, and it's deadly serious. Malik versus the monster wearing his brother's face, nothing could ever be more serious than that, and he cuts his blade down sharply to bat away the creeping claws when it grabs for him knowing that one will live and one will die and he's damned if he'll be the one to fall. Though perhaps he is damned either way.
But the thing he's fighting ultimately isn't real, regardless of its sneering laughs or wretched pleas or the blood – its own and Malik's – caught under its long nails and smeared across its filthy assassins' robes. It's an Apple thing, an illusion, even if now the illusion somehow wears real flesh and carries real bones. Only the truth is blessed, Malik thinks, and manages to gouge out a hunk of skin along its pocked, pitted arm. And because that is true, because so little of this is true, because of that he thinks that even battered as he is he may yet win.
Even wretched as Malik is he thinks that this time he can save his brother.
"Hurts, Akhi," the thing whines, long tongue lapping at its wounded arm, and Malik grimly nods.
He steps to the side and trips over the back of his hemline with a curse; Altair's assassin's clothing isn't much different from his own with the black robe left behind but they're built different, Altair taller and Malik more muscular, so it doesn't fit quite right. Not at all how it was supposed to go, he was only to hold the orb long enough for Altair to get Darim away and then they would regroup, but he of all people can't complain about changing plans. He and Altair share a mind along with the clothes, so it seems, and so if one changes course the other will adapt as instinct.
Altair. Malik glances when he can but neither Altair nor Abbas is visible. He wonders how that fight is going. Then the creature snaps at his knuckles, a very fortunate near miss, and he forces himself to pay attention – to focus on the creature, hard as it is.
He waits for it to swipe forward again and cuts it across the arm. The blood spurts out and then, horrifically, solidifies into red-tinged spongy flesh like an aborted extra appendage sprouted out from the base of the arm. The beast can be hurt – it yowls at the strike – but even its pain shapes itself into a weapon. How to kill the solid heart of dream stuff?
Malik goes on the offensive this time and cuts it again, shallow wounds to test a theory. This time the wounds turn gelatinous and scab over with something like water, the color of blood and the color of its skin mixing into an ugly brown-purple. It reaches a deformed arm towards him, and he drags himself to the side, sluggish. The reaching limb spreads pale human fingers, though the rest of it looks less human every second. It stretches bonelessly, swipes, he dodges, and as it misses the creature snaps its jaw with impatience and the fingers curl back into eagle's claws, black and diseased and peeling scales.
It moves slow too with all this shape-shifting. So Malik despite his pain moves faster now and sinks his dagger into what should have been an elbow with a meaty thunk. The creature tugs its arm backwards in that joint-defying way, threatening to take the dagger along with it, so he kicks at it, pushes it back, frees his weapon from the mass of that sick arm and pulls back himself, panting.
He knows this is a sick man's fight – he can't even straighten up fully, blood down his spine, and the Apple's fantasia is warping itself mad. A nightmare, Malik thinks, the ridiculous kind you laugh at when you wake.
And he knows…hacking at its limbs, kicking at its trunk, will do nothing but drive it to further flights of monstrous, transformative fancy while he wears himself out. The longer this takes the more likely he loses – falls to the ground to be devoured by a monster with his brother's face. Devoured by his and Altair's own delusions. And where is Altair, anyway, and Darim? They need his help, no doubt, while he stalls here because he can't bring himself to do what must be done.
What assassin is a coward? If it hurts him to plunge the knife then let it hurt and be a lesson.
Finally Malik looks the creature in its blue and blown-pupil eyes.
It reaches more limbs to trap him and with his dagger held sideways he severs them in wet bunches. He sees an opening and scratches its face – and it wails at him like an affronted child. Theory confirmed.
The transformations come faster now: he ducks between a forest of hands and talons, bone hooks and fanged mouths in palms. He tries to spin it around to the back, to where if it had been human he would have stabbed it under the ribs. The wounded body seems to melt into itself, losing its human symmetry, one side dragging down the other like some demonic version of a stillbirth an assassin's wife had once in Jerusalem, two separate baby selves attached at the hip by webs of flesh. It killed the mother too, that birth.
But all this parrying is just Malik stalling again. Then the creature hooks at his legs with sudden curved tusks and he almost falls. And he is not sure he'll be able to get back up again. Heart pounding he stabs it wherever he can reach it, hitting fat and useless organs, just to drive it back, drive it away…
It hardly even looks like his brother any more, but those eyes – I can't, he thinks, I can't, I can't…
Then the creature says, "Malik." It can't talk much anymore, the shape of its mouth sacrificed to some confused attempt at a snout. The Apple hardly knows what to do with this fantasy, what to do when Malik keeps fighting back.
"Malik," it mumbles. "Please, please."
It hurts.
"I know," he says. "I'm taking too long, I'm sorry…it's hard…"
"Malik," it says again. "Brother."
And whether that is his brother, the spirit pulled from the void by the Apple and embedded somewhere inside all that damp, putrescent flesh, Malik might never know. Whether there could have been a way to save it, bring it back to stability and sanity. Whether Kadar does hate him for Solomon's Temple. Whether he asked for this. Whether this is all his fault. A dream, a nightmare, and there must always be an awakening…
"Akhi, please. Hurts."
I can't, but assassins always can.
So Malik smiles as he stabs it, dagger up to the hilt in the throat, aimed upwards into the mouth, the face, the core. He cuts his brother's throat and stabs his face, calling the Apple's bluff, and he smiles at he does it, with kindness and reassurance, because this is the last thing Kadar will ever see, and he doesn't want his little brother to be afraid.
Let him see the older brother who loves him, letting him go.
Maybe the creature smiles back at him, for half a breath.
Then it crumbles to powder and less than powder, and then it's gone and only scuffmarks in the dirt show that it ever was. The bright blue eyes are gone. The eager smile is gone. His brother is gone. But his brother has been gone for years.
Malik pats his face and finds it dry, mostly. He wedges a stained boot into the ruins of the fence and looks out over Masyaf. He thinks…
But there are shouts then, closer to the fortress. And so he must move on.
He picks up the artifact, cold and silent now, and drops it back into its pouch. Then he pushes himself up the sloping path, trying to focus on the looming fortress with its many crannies for hiding mercenaries and not the wounded beat of his pulse in his ears. As he rounds past the old cliff-side storage building where once he and Altair stared each other down, he sees Darim kick a man through its wooden door. He goes over, peers into the dust and sees there's no reason to toss a follow-up knife, then turns to Altair's eldest, who's a little bedraggled and torn up and still has rope burns around his wrists, but who overall looks ok.
"First kill, mm?" Malik asks, and Darim shrugs, eyes sliding away. No ceremony then, for father or son, and no grappling with what it means until later, in the dark. Well, there's no changing it now.
"Darim, where's your father?"
"He went after Abbas. Back towards the fortress."
"Come on then. After all that's happened today I don't trust him alone in there."
"You mean – you want me to come? Not to stay behind?"
"Of course. I must guard the Grandmaster's back, so I'll need someone to guard my own. What's left of it," he grumbles. Darim takes a step back to grasp the whole of him and his eyes widen.
"Uncle, you're – you can't fight like this!"
"Maybe not, there's no point in assuming. My place is with Altair."
"And…and the creature?"
"Gone. Dead. If it ever lived at all."
"You killed it? But it looked just like your—"
"There's no time to talk, Darim, let's go. Before our mercenary friends regroup."
"Yes…to Father…"
"Darim." Malik puts his hand on the boy's shoulder, firms his grip. Darim swallows but the Dai – who knows from coaxing nervous novices – doesn't loosen his hold until Darim looks at him. "This is a mission," he says. "It could end in their deaths, or yours. It could bring you glory or suffering. You are an assassin, you know the Creed: everything is permitted, even fear. But nothing is true, and no failure can be assumed. You have only your own hands, Darim, and yet you have the strength of all your Brothers."
Darim says, "I understand," and he looks as though he does. Malik nods.
"To your father, then. Come on!"
-i-
Once he was a boy, and he had not yet climbed all the castle.
It drove Altair mad as a child, to know that there were corridors not yet tramped upon, towers not yet scaled, wings where he was not welcome. At six or ten or fifteen Altair desired – demanded – to know everything, to go everywhere. He never bothered to admit to himself that there were things beyond him or places he didn't yet deserve to see; the rest of the Order looked at his strange skin and told him that enough already.
Now his feet slip across ancient stone and he cuts his blade into cracked mosaic tile and splashes blood across the walls. Now there is truly no mystery of the Brotherhood he does not know, save one: the mystery of Malik, and what he means, and why he stays. Now Altair is the Grandmaster, he is routing a coup d'état, he is an almost inhumanly skilled fighter and it isn't hubris to say that, it's the truth.
But still, as he chases Abbas across the courtyard where novices train and newcomers gawk, as their fight propels them into the abandoned great hall where usually scholars bustle and the Master plots, now as Altair fights at the peak of his strength ultimately, at the heart of him, he just feels small.
Small in the face of Malik, who has always had such a grip on his heart and mind – even without realizing it! Altair has loved others, he loves his wife and children and the sword-swing justice of his righteous Order, but with Malik it is almost more fear than love, it has almost gone through love and out the other side into incomprehensible terror and need. Malik could crush him with one finger yet never has, though he's come close.
(Close in the face of Kadar's death and wretched rebirth. Close in the betrayal of humoring Darim. Close in the face of more than two years of pure Jerusalem hatred stippled with grief like fat. Closest of all in the desert, alone, riding back to Masyaf without the Apple and without the companions and refusing to believe – not daring to believe, not brave enough at all – that his last sight of Malik would be of them amid some stupid fight. Hate exists, grief exists, they can be reckoned with and pleaded with and sacrificed for but death?)
And maybe it is that fear that moves him now, as he catches Abbas and they parry blows and then Abbas runs for more distance and Altair follows him and the whole village is nothing more than stage setting, though he's only seen one play in his life and was restless throughout, much to Malik's displeasure. Maybe it is the memory of all the times he's failed his beloved – well, whatever you'd call it – that spurs him on now. But it isn't a distraction. He can't remember a time when he didn't fight with one thought at all times on where Malik is.
Abbas is panting at the top of the stairs.
Altair takes them three at a time and swings low, at the man's legs; Abbas is a good grappler but he (clearly) struggles with planning ahead. Now the only place for him to go is out into the back garden, site of so many clashes before this. I'll cut you down here as I cut down Al Mualim, Altair thinks. This is my place. Now I know it. Ghosts upon ghosts upon ghosts.
But Abbas gets a clever swipe or two in as Altair comes full into the light, keeping the sun behind him and using the slippery stone to keep Altair off balance. The Son of None allows a few superficial marks and bruises to his arms and chest while he looks for a way to reclaim the high ground.
"Bastard," Abbas is groaning, "Bastard, you've ruined it again. Why you couldn't you just—"
"You don't understand," Altair answers, aiming for a jab with the hidden blade, "you never have."
"I do!" he shrieks and slams his elbow up, smashing it right into Altair's face. He has to fumble a step back, one hand on his sword hilt and one hand clamped to his nose, to the spray of fresh blood.
Abbas says, "I know your tricks, Altair!"
Altair grits his bloodstained teeth, drops his heavy broadsword and swings out his lighter blade. He decides the best way is to tire the other man out, keep him dancing, see whose stamina is stronger in their unexpected middle age. He strikes, misses, feints, strikes...
We are here we are here ancestor of the prophet use us use us use us use
No. He kicks Abbas in the ankle and jerks back; this time he's the one who needs the breathing room. No! The Apple isn't even here, how on earth could he use it – he doesn't need to use it, not for Abbas, not for this, even the win would be all wrong when he has promised Malik…
We offer you power we offer you foresight we see the only way to save mankind we remember your rebellion we do not hold grudges use us!
"Everyone holds grudges," he mumbles. Whatever she-he-it lives in the Apple has stalked and twisted Malik's longing (or is it Altair's own longing?) into that Kadar creature, and yet it speaks of no revenge?
"I won't use you," he says over the whirling clash of blades.
"What?" Abbas huffs out. "Are you even paying attention?"
"I won't look for you and I don't need you."
No need to look for us. We are here.
He glances up quickly and Malik appears in the doorway, Darim a step behind. They both look stretched to the breaking point, Malik especially, and as Altair sees them he sees the pouch on his second's hip begin to glow.
I won't use the Apple, he thinks, but the Apple replies, You will.
And then it all goes strange…
-i-
Malik's first thought is, Shit, we've distracted him.
Malik's second thought is, This isn't right…what's wrong with his eyes?
Malik's third thought is more a moment of revulsion as he realizes the Apple of Eden has burned right through the pouch and fallen heavily to the ground.
Behind him Darim whispers, "Father…?"
-i-
The gold sliver goes white hot in the old man's hand, so suddenly that he cries out in surprise. This entire time he's held the thing in one hand, ferrying it to the very wooden gates of al-Masyaf, picking his way down roads gone eerie and plague-still, and now it chooses to come awake?
Bad tidings, he thinks. Bad tidings indeed.
-i-
The glow lines that form the world are all apparent to him now and this is not the world of fog and figure this is the world as he has glimpsed it only rarely this is the world as Al Mualim must have seen it the day he died this—
Altair turns his head and sees Abbas mouth-agape as well, so he's seen it too, and they meet eyes for only a spark second of confusion before movement by the castle wall catches them both. Darim pushes past Malik somehow, moves towards them across the golden streams and gold-cracked tiles and gold-streaked grass, and then there is a cry and Ali is there somehow, popped up and out from a hidden corner of the trampled garden with a big butcher's knife of a thing gripped tightly in one clawed fist—
Ali hurls himself on Darim and stabs again and again, the spurts of red blood a shock in this golden world. Abbas sees it too, Altair knows he does, sees him shudder. There is a pause where everything is still – Ali over Darim's body and Malik in the doorway – see he can't protect you – see you need our strength, prophet's sire – and then Altair's mind goes perfectly amazingly wretchedly white and he launches at Abbas with a roar, a cry the likes of which no eagle has ever made, only jackals and dying things.
Abbas, gone green around the mouth and taken by surprise, falls back with his arms over his face but can't get clear. Altair is a devil. Altair is a whirl. Altair, the Son of None, is kin to no man now. No weapons – he punches, the blood and spit off Abbas lapping at his scarred knuckles, until finally Abbas turns and runs away across to the back of the garden, where it drops off into cliff.
The Son of None stalks after him. He is still empty and pure with rage, sightless even, transcendent in the glinting world. Though now he is holding his sword – from its holster? off the ground? – and that is comforting and true.
His target has run out of ground. Abbas stands panting, face swollen and bruised, looking frantically around with one leg against the stone Malik had put in for Kadar.
The Son of None swings. Abbas dives, with a yell, and the sword hits the stone and cracks it, spews shards. This time the Son of None laughs.
(Malik made a face once, after a joint mission of theirs: "You grin sometimes, when you fight. Do you even realize you're doing it or is it hardly you in there to smirk at the time?")
Abbas is terrified now but he knows that if he can't run and can't climb, his pursuer guarding the walls, then he must fight. So he does, he tries, and even gets off a swing or two before the Son of None hacks his sword hand half-off and the blade with it. Abbas howls. Hunches up. Again the Master Assassin has no need for his sword so he picks the target off the ground with both hands fisted in his collar and lets him thrash around. Below his feet there is nothing but the river, a very long way down.
Abbas is spitting and swearing and scratching at his killer's grip with his good hand, so the red-tinged sweat over his left eye drips down unopposed, and maybe it's the blood in it that snaps him to awareness, maybe it's the assassin blood in him even still. He jerks suddenly, blinking furiously, cranes his neck to see over the Son of None's shoulder. "Altair," he croaks, "wait, wait, Altair, this isn't – it isn't how it seems…"
But he seems to grasp very quickly that it doesn't matter, in the end, the shape of the world or what kinds of bile fill it up. His hand falters on the Master Assassin's; he sees that this is a successful mission, he sees his death. He sees that even when they've both gone mad at once, he will always be the weaker of the two.
He cries against the Master Assassin's hissing breath, "Please! I am just trying to understand!"
Someone else is calling to the Son of None from very far away. He narrows his eyes.
"I don't understand!" Abbas says. "I am God's faithful servant! I have always been! And yet – yet – why you? Why always you?"
Altair blinks and some of the golden hue is leeched from the garden. He feels dazed, dizzy, like coming up for air after half a second too long underneath.
He looks at Abbas. "I don't…I don't know," he admits. "I'm sorry."
Abbas's face trembles, contorts, goes ugly beneath its bruises with disbelief and hate. Then-...
Altair will never be sure how it happened, looking back: whether he loosened his grip on accident or on purpose, or maybe whether it had anything to do with him at all. Maybe Abbas was the one to rip himself free, from this place where he was only a mission. Maybe it was his own destiny he fell into. Nothing is true. And so any of it could be true. It only depends on the story.
Altair stands looking down into the clouds below the cliff edge, empty-handed, the wind whipping his coattails and pulling his cowl into his eyes. But in the stillness it goes wrong again, that alchemic whiteness comes upon him again and again the world is gold-lined as it was when Al Mualim stood here last, projecting mysteries into the air. He stumbles, a hand to his forehead, until he is convinced that such a fall would not kill Abbas, that the man must have survived and even now be lurking and plotting in the canyon below. Unacceptable! Unforgiveable! He will leap down after the cur, he will come out of the Leap of Faith and shred Abbas to meaty ribbons with his talons, he will—
Just before he leaps someone grabs him by the shoulders, crying, "No, don't! It's the Apple!"
Altair staggers, comes out of the artifact's grasp fully but in doing so surrenders all its foreign strength and quite a bit of his own as well. He falls to his hands and knees, sags against the supporting body. Malik, he thinks, Malik's here, but when he turns his head it isn't Malik but Darim, looking at him, holding him up.
"Father," his son says, helplessly.
Altair yanks himself free and grabs at the boy, patting roughly at his chest and shoulders, all the places he knows he saw the knife go in.
"Stop, it's fine, I'm fine," Darim keeps saying.
"No. I saw-!"
"It wasn't real, Father, none of it, it was all illusions from that, that orb thing. It had you and Abbas – Malik went to throw it down the stairs. Father, it's finished, it's ok. You killed Abbas."
"Ali?"
"Not here, he wasn't ever here. It's ok. It's done."
"Yes, done, at last." Malik comes up to them, stooping badly, hand to his shoulder. "Congratulations," he says softly. "You've won, Grandmaster."
But Altair can only look at his son and his second, and try to find himself in what their faces reflect back.