Malik Al Sayr: Shambles

“I want the journals, Malik.”

I stared up from the book I’d been reading with cold steel knot in my belly by the hour to see a ghost of a man standing in the doorway, leaning on the side with one shaking arm. The man was more scarecrow than human, the once vigorous frame racked with pain and wounds I could only imagine. And I had a share of my own too. The left arm still wanted acknowledgment of its ghostly existence. But the once empty place in my heart, where my brother had dwelt until his death, battered, sore, was now again filled. The walking corpse in the doorway to my chambers filled that void. It was Altair.

Out of a ravaged pale sunken face eyes gleamed like twin fires of the night watch, two black dots that sparkled with life where every other part of him was shrivelled. I heard the wheeze of his breathing, saw him lean and limp inside pulling the door closed behind  him. Altair, once the man I hated above all for a few months. Now a month after the terrible night, when all was still in flux, I welcomed the one anchor to the world suddenly gone mad. The Templars were in disarray, King Richard displeased and shamed that his right hand man had fallen to an Assassin’s blade in what the Latins saw as fair combat – but not unless it involved the infidels. Then trickery was at play.

What stood before me was no trick of the eye. Altair looked half dead on his feet. And if the murmurs I heard him mutter in delirium were anything to go by, he might be losing his mind. To that thing. The Piece of Eden kept in his room at his insistent request. No one but me knew it was there. He’d had me swear not to breathe a word or even a look to anyone about it when I’d found out that he had it there. As far as the Brothers were concerned he’d discovered treachery of the Master who’d tried to kill him. The dead Brothers in the Garden – cleaned now by the women who took care of it of all the blood and reseeded – were to have been destroyed by the Master as they’d stood to defend Altair. Not many would believe that magic was responsible. Not many had known that the Master had kept an artifact of immense power close in his study. Many knew of Altair’s failure in the attempt to bring it – the details of that mission had remained secret between me, Master and Altair.

“You should be in bed, Altair,” I blurted, so amazed by his appearance that my usual self control deserted me. To see my friend thus – a few months ago I’d have felt bitter he was not dead – reminded me yet again of what we had lost. Altair was the only living Assassin who had seen the Master’s last moments. I had to glean his madness from the journals I’d retrieved with difficulty from the Solomon’s Temple. The things he’d done, believing the rightness of his course and actions. The sacrifice he’d had me make all unknowing…. I shook myself. Move on. Past is done with.

The tall Assassin’s black gaze bore into me as he said, voice grating, “I have been confined long enough. I will atrophy if I stay still. You know this, Brother.”

Indeed I sensed his impatience, his annoyance at the closed in space of his chamber where he’d stayed alone with the ball so near. That ball troubled me more than his state of injury. The things I had seen that night, the world – I knew it for what it was, having read all the ancients I could lay hands on in the past few weeks, guessed at the least at the glowing thing I’d seen – the power I had felt expended from that fiery ball of energy and unfamiliar metals. My hair still stood on end, my soul ached with an unrequited longing. I knew that to gaze at that ball of silver would be my undoing. My will reft away like leaves in the fall wind.

“I need to know more of what al Mualim did,” Altair went on slowly, coming to lean on the table before me with shaking hands. “I need to understand – his reasons, his thought.”

Guilt. The knowledge struck me like a hammer a nail. Despite the necessity of the act, Altair mourned the man he had laid low. I could tell in the rigid lines of his face and under his words the horror he had perpetrated. He wanted to have some justification, some understanding of the man he had thought he’d known. And had loved for so many years, although neither of them would have ever confessed to such feelings. Both hard men. Both with checkered pasts locked away and not touched. More alike in strength and honour than either would ever let on. But the Master had betrayed his calling, his duty. Altair who had never questioned his duty before did now: was full of uncertainties as his world had been shattered. As had mine. I, who had been so sure of the interpretation of the Creed, I, who had allowed his emotions out at the only human being who had ever understood me at all, I, who had been so blind with anger and disgust at what he’d become when Altair had come with his suspicions.

I got up from behind the desk, uncomfortable sitting while he stood, and came around to lay a hand on his shoulder. Years ago we’d accepted such comfort from one another. But we’d drifted apart – he an Assassin, I the Rafiq of Jerusalem, different duties, different lives. We’d not seen a lot of one another. We’d grown apart with age and experience. Now I knew that the debacle at Solomon’s Temple had been a step on a healing road, perverse as that sounded. Kadar’s death had been the start of the road back as the two of us were involved in the Master’s madness to end his former allies’ lives and keep the Eden for himself.

Altair did not flinch, did not even stiffen. He’d not strength enough for that yet. I could feel him shake in every muscle. God, what world was this to bring a strong man like him to his knees!

“We can study them together, you and I. I want to know as much as you do. I know parts – but some things only you can fill in.” I paused, bitter for a moment, knowing he’d recover eventually and be able to resume his duties as an Assassin. For me that life was barred. I was a cripple. “You were there,” I went on, repressing such unworthy emotions. They had led to our estrangement. I was done with them. “Which one do you want to read first?”

He rummaged on the table among the papers and books I’d had there. Some were the reports of the Rafiqs from other cities, some were money lists of the treasure we had secreted away in the vaults in the mountains. Administration of the Brotherhood required a lot of time and patience. It had fallen to me. No one had been ready to take charge after that night. As a Rafiq I’d had a lot of experience at running a bureau. Masyaf was one such but on a grander scale. I barely had time to sleep with all the clamouring requests for my attention. I wondered how the Master had found time to spend in his study at all in such quietude.

“Perhaps it’d make sense,” Altair said quietly, hands closing on a tattered book with crumpled pages. Tamir’s journal. I knew all of them now by feel. Each man had treated his book differently, with all the covers being the same matted burgundy colour. “If I were to start with the first victim I’d killed.” He looked up at me. “Tamir.”

I could see the suppressed eagerness, the ever inquisitive mind behind his eyes already at work. Yet there was some other darkness in his eyes, nothing to do with his eye colour or the injuries. My spine prickled. Unease stole over me, pore by pore. Yet I would not ask him what had happened. I would not berate him. He needed rest. If reading was going to do that then I’d give him all the journals. I myself was on Talal’s: the slaver had a lot to say about the workings of Jerusalem and Majd Addin.

“I will go to the Gardens,” Altair had turned to go, book in hand, his stride stiff, slow but sure. A man with a purpose. It heartened me to see him so. The nightmares of his nights seemed far away now that he had something to take hold of. “You know where to find me. I need air.”

The last came out in a whisper as I nodded behind his back and wondered if I should follow him or have some one look out. He was still weak, thin as a stick. It’d take him months to recover his strength and muscle.

For myself I had work to do. But as I sat down I could not escape a feeling of foreboding. The Piece of Eden troubled me greatly. Its powers had not been revealed to any of the ten men who’d sought to use it as a tool. Even the erasure of the minds of men seemed only a small fraction what it could do. Anytime I thought of it the more I became convinced that the ball was more than just a shiny bauble. Men had died for it. I wanted to know why.

I dragged my hand down my face, pressing the heel into my eyes. I had not eaten yet – it was afternoon judging by the elongated shadows in my room. God there was so much to learn and understand yet. So many mysteries. Perhaps between us me and Altair could come up with some way to defend the Brothers before we lost our cohesion completely. Before Alamut sent a new Master for us. I dreaded that day. The new man would be an unknown, stepping into shoes too big for him. And I knew he must never learn of the Piece of Eden. If he did, neither me nor Altair would live long. Men coveted this thing. I had seen it with my own eyes. I had wanted it for a while – I had almost died to bring it back here. Fool, I should have been thinking then – but with Kadar newly dead and Altair’s arrogance at last breaking my reason I had been insane. The two of us who knew of the Piece of Eden had to walk a careful path. Altair most of all: many would want him tried for his deed. Many with Abbas in the lead would howl for his life. Sick as he was he’d have no chance of mounting a proper defence. And I could not fight for him, not with weapons at least. I knew I was still good with a blade, having found a new balance to cover my lack of an arm. But my dislike for Altair was well known. My sudden change of heart would only make men suspicious.

With a sigh I reached for paper and ink. Then pushed them away. I had spent too long a time sitting. I stood up, restless, hand itching to hold a blade. Like my never resting Brother, I sought the distraction of bodily movement: slice, cut, parry, again. Moreover, the sun was shining and the novices remaining needed instruction in combat. Until such time as Altair recovered I was the only one matching in skill to him, crippled or not.

My sabre was hanging where I’d left it yesterday – off a hook on the wall in my bedchamber. I’d spent an hour cleaning it. Now the steel shone like gems.
Smiling tightly, glad of a reprieve from tedious work and uncertain truths, I headed out into the sunshine of Masyaf, my last thoughts before I forgot everything in the dance of steel of the Brother in his dark corner in the Gardens with a book in his lap as life went on around us. As my own had gone on even after Kadar was no longer a part of it. We all have our strengths to push past the difficult times. The trick was to find them. Some never did: some simply fell through the cracks of life and vanished into madness or obscurity. Others knew that life was worth something even if it meant losing some one dear to you or changing your perceptions of those around you. A hard task that. A man’s thinking was ingrained by long usage and upbringing. To swing it the other way was nigh impossible without a weighty reason. Or a good heart. Altair would undoubtedly have scoffed at that last observation. He pretended not to have a heart – but I knew better. And so did he now. It was unfair that to reveal that to himself had taken deaths of those close to him but such was life. And he had learned to deal with that. That is why he felt such guilt at killing al Mualim. That is why he had apologized to me for Kadar’s death. That was how I found out that I too had a heart, a heart I’d left behind at some point – so far back that even Kadar had not been able to bring it back until he died.

As the blades swung through the air and sinew flowed under the skin, I found it possible to rejoice at life despite death. I was glad that me and Altair still breathed. Together we could examine the shambles that the Master had left and make sense of his deeds – to some extent. The full extent of his thought we’d never know. He no longer lived to tell us of it. But I felt sure that whatever we did uncover would prepare us to deal with the Piece of Eden in due time. For now I’d take the days as they came. The future was too uncertain to worry over. And we were both alive. That was enough.