Revelations

FORTY-FOUR

Maria and Altair had reached the confines of the castle and began to encounter Assassins-members of the Brotherhood-who knew them. But the meetings were far from friendly.

One approached them and made to pass by without acknowledgment, but Altair stopped him.

“Brother. Speak with us a moment.”

Unwillingly, the Assassin turned. But his expression was stern. “For what reason should I speak with you? So that you can twist my mind into knots with that devilish artifact of yours?”

And he hurried away, refusing to talk any further.

But hard on his heels came another Assassin. He, too, however, clearly wished to avoid any contact with the former Mentor and his wife.

“Are you well, brother?” asked Altair, accosting him, and there was something challenging in his tone.

“Who is asking?” he replied, rudely.

“Do you not recognize me? I am Altair.”

He looked at him levelly. “That name has a hollow sound, and you-you are a cipher, nothing more. I would learn more talking to the wind.”

They made their way unchallenged to the castle gardens. Once there, they knew why they had been allowed to penetrate so far. Suddenly, they were surrounded by dark-clad Assassins, loyal to their usurping Mentor, Abbas, and they stood ready to strike at any moment. Then, on a rampart above them, Abbas himself appeared, sneeringly in control.

“Let them speak,” he ordered in an imperious voice. To Altair and Maria, he said: “Why have you come here? Why have you returned, unwelcome as you are, to this place? To defile it further?”

“We seek the truth about our son’s death,” replied Altair in a calm, clear voice. “Why was Sef killed?”

“Is it the truth you want or an excuse for revenge?” Abbas responded.

“If the truth gives us an excuse, we will act on it,” Maria threw back at him.

This retort gave Abbas pause, but after a moment’s reflection he said, in a lower tone: “Surrender the Apple, Altair, and I will tell you why your son was put to death.”

Altair nodded, as if at a secret insight, and, turning, prepared himself to address the assembled Brotherhood of Assassins. He raised his voice commandingly.

“Ah, the truth is out already! Abbas wants the Apple for himself. Not to open your minds-but to control them!”

Abbas was quick to reply. “You have held that artifact for thirty years, Altair, reveling in its power and hoarding its secrets. It has corrupted you!”

Altair looked around at the sea of faces, most set against him, some-a few-showing signs of doubt. His mind worked quickly as he concocted a plan, which might just work.

“Very well, Abbas,” he said. “Take it.”

And he took the Apple from the pouch at his side and held it up high.

“What-?” said Maria, taken aback.

Abbas’s eyes flashed at the sight of the Apple, but he hesitated before signaling to his bodyguard to go and take it from Altair’s gaunt hand.

The bodyguard came close. When he was standing next to Altair, a demon possessed him. An amused expression on his face, he leaned in to the former Mentor, and whispered in his ear: “It was I who executed your son Sef. Just before I killed him, I told him that it was you yourself who had ordered his death.”

He did not see the flash of lightning in Altair’s eyes. He blundered on, pleased with himself, and, scarcely restraining a laugh, said: “Sef died believing you had betrayed him.”

Altair turned burning eyes on him then. In his hand, the Apple exploded with the light of a bursting star.

“Ahhhh!” screamed the bodyguard in pain. His whole body writhed uncontrollably. His hands went to his head, scrabbling at his temples. It looked as if he were trying to tear his head from his body in an attempt to stop the agony.

“Altair!” cried Maria.

But Altair was deaf to her. His eyes were black with fury as, driven by an unseen force, the bodyguard, even as he tried to resist his own impulses, pulled a long knife from his belt and, with hands trembling as they tried to oppose the power which drove them, raised it, ready to plunge it into his own throat.

Maria seized her husband’s arm, shaking him, and crying again, “Altair! No!”

Her words had their effect at last. An instant later, visibly shaken, Altair broke free of the trance that had gripped him. His eyes became normal again, and the Apple withdrew its light, becoming dark and dull, inert in his hand.

But the bodyguard, freed of the force which had held him in its grasp, shook himself like a dog, looked around madly, in anger and fear, and with a terrible oath, threw himself on Maria, striking his knife deep into her back.

Then he drew back, leaving the knife buried where he had driven it. Maria stood, a faint cry forming on her lips. The entire company of Assassins stood as if turned to stone. Abbas himself was silent, his mouth open, but no sound came forth.

It was Altair who moved. To the bodyguard, it seemed as if his former Mentor unleashed his hidden-blade with appalling slowness. The blade snicked out and the sound it made might have been as loud as a rock snapping in the heat of the sun. The bodyguard saw the blade coming toward him, toward his face, saw it approach inch by inch, second by second, as it seemed to him. But then the speed was sudden and ferocious as he felt it split his face open between the eyes. There was an explosion in his head, and then, nothing.

Altair stood for a fraction of a second as the bodyguard fell to the ground, blood shooting from his head between the shattered eyes, then caught his wife as she began to collapse, and lowered her gently to the earth which would soon, he knew, receive her. A ball of ice grew in his heart as he bent over her, his face so close to hers that they seemed like lovers about to kiss.

They were caught in a silence that wrapped itself around them like armor. She was trying to speak. He strained to hear her.

“Altair. My love. Strength.”

“Maria…” His voice was no more than an anguished whisper.

Then, appallingly, the sounds and the dust and the smells rose up violently around him again, smashing through the protecting armor, and above it all the shrieking voice of Abbas:

“He is possessed! Kill him!”

Altair rose and, drawing himself to his full height, backed slowly away.

“Take the Apple!” screamed Abbas. “Now!”