An Assembly of Bones:Chapter Five

[communi_kate]

Title: An Assembly of Bones (5/?)
Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Spoilers: Post-game
Rating:15
Warnings: Violence, coercion
Summary: Malik meets the Templar Masters.

An Assembly of Bones

An Assassin's Creed fan fiction by xahra99 

Chapter Five. 

The Garden of the Hesperides, Morocco

 The only sound in the garden was the noise of the wind in the branches of the apple trees.

The Eden fragment is here, thought Malik.

He felt a sudden chill. The hackles on the back of his neck rose like a frightened hound's.

If Malik had been a wiser man, he would have run. If he had been a more foolish man, he would have killed both Templars on the spot and probably died himself. But he was an Assassin to the core, so he gritted his teeth and raised his chin.

The Templar Master was a tall man. He was dressed like a Berber lord in a long striped robe with a red sash and a small black turban. The only thing which distinguished him from a hundred other men was his eyes. They were as piercing as an arrowhead, and a curious pale green.

As Malik stared, he began to wonder if his first impression of the man had been wrong. Al-Walid's intense expression, which Malik had taken for fanaticism at first, seemed now kindly and reassuring. His strange eyes became less strange. He seemed both benevolent and noble; a man, Malik now realized, in which one might place an absolute trust. He dropped instinctively to his knees. Beside him, Marîd gazed open-mouthed. Malik reached for the back of the boy's robes and yanked him down with him.

Al-Walid smiled. "You have come a long way," he said in a voice like rocks rolling down a hill. "Why have you travelled so far?"

"I was searching for a great sage," Malik said. "It seems that I have found one."

The Master seemed to take this as his due. He nodded, watching Malik all the time with his piercing green eyes. Malik had read many books. He had always scoffed at the flowery compliments men like ibn Shaddad pressed upon their patrons. Now he realised that ibn Shaddad had not gone far enough.

This man towers over Al Mualim, he thought. Like the shadow of God upon earth. A priceless emerald among pearls.

The voice of al-Walid wrenched Malik from his reverie. "You came to seek a sage," the Master said. He and al-Ghurab exchanged glances. "Is that the only reason?"

Malik felt suddenly ashamed. The emotion came from nowhere and flooded every corner of his soul. Of course the Master knew all his secrets. It seemed ludicrous to continue his charade in the face of such omnipotence. "I-" His voice caught, rough as any tongue-tied farmer.

"What?" Al-Walid smiled broadly. His smile illuminated his face and filled Malik with awe, reverence and respect. Such sentiments had previously been foreign to him. Now, they seemed only natural.

Malik had spent years travelling. He had seen the towers of Timbuktu, the sunsets of the Sahara and the pyramids of Egypt. None of them had moved him as much as the mere presence of al-Walid.

 So this is what awe feels like, he thought.

"Do you have any sins you wish to confess?" the Master's companion al Ghurab asked sharply. His harsh voice sliced through Malik's pleasant haze for a moment before the fog rolled in again. He looked at al-Walid, who nodded. "It is a sad thing," he said in his pleasant baritone, "We stand upon the threshold between the old world and the new. It is a wonderful time. The new world will be a better place where all shall live as equals. But evil men would see this dream destroyed. Even one bad apple-" he reached up and plucked a fruit from a nearby tree, "may ruin a basket. Corruption may infect even a clean sword cut."

"We must cauterise such infection," the thin man al-Ghurab said, "with fire and the sword."

Al-Walid nodded. The heavy muscles in his forearm bunched as he squeezed his fist. Chunks of apple pulp and juice trickled between his fingers.

"To enter," al-Ghurab continued, "you must renounce any evil in your heart, and accept the truth."

Malik could not help but agree. Guilt curled like a snake in his chest. "I-" he tried again, but could not speak.

"For this is surely Paradise on Earth," al-Walid said gently. "And did the angels not question our Lord, saying 'Wilt thou place in our Garden one who will make mischief and shed blood, whilst we do celebrate your praises and glorify Thy holy name?' For I know the secrets of heaven and of earth, and I know what you reveal, and what you conceal as well."

Malik did not doubt it. Beside him, Marîd's mouth dropped slightly open. Still he held his tongue.

Something is wrong, he realised.

Of course, his conscience needled. You lie.

No...Something else. The Apple...

The Master frowned. "Speak, then," he commanded.

Malik opened his mouth to confess everything -

And al-Walid's pleasurable compulsion crashed headlong into years of Assassin training and world-weary cynicism.

The Assassin training won.

Malik shook his head and looked around. The sunlight blinded him. He felt as if he had a head of fumes from last night's smoking. It seemed impossible that nobody had noticed his change of heart, yet al-Walid still smiled encouragingly at him as if nothing had happened. He became suddenly aware of the presence of the three Templar guards standing silently behind him.

 "The Master ordered you to speak," al-Ghurab said in a voice like tearing paper.

Marîd gaped admiringly at the Master's lieutenant. Malik resisted the urge to smack him around the head. Instead he let his eyes drop to the path.

I will break your power, Templars, he thought, keeping his gaze fixed on the flagstones, and bring your castle down around your ears. And all I have to do is find the Eden fragment you keep hidden here.

"My only confession," he said, struggling to keep his voice level, "is that I cannot be a better servant."

Both men relaxed. Malik felt some of the pressure slip. ""Ah, good," the Master said."A loyal servant. Nothing better."

Ziri al-Ghurab's right hand slid away from the hilt of his sword. "What is your occupation, servant?" he asked, sounding both disappointed and bored.

"I was a librarian," Malik told them. "Before that, a soldier."

"I have his sword here," interjected the guard Nayir. He untied Malik's battered sabre from his sash and handed it to Al-Ghurab. The Master's lieutenant examined the handle cursorily before he drew the blade. The Damascene steel gleamed in the last light of the sun. "A good blade," he said in surprise.

"A family heirloom," Malik said, although the comment had not been directly addressed to him.

The Master's lieutenant tucked the blade into his belt. "I will take this for safekeeping," he said, stroking the plain hilt.

"You will not need it," al-Walid said to Malik. "There is no place for weapons in Eden."

There is in mine, Malik thought. Protesting would have been extremely foolish, and so he did not. I'll merely add my blade to the list of things I need to steal.

"We shall see that you are provided for," the Master said. "You are our brother now. We shall keep you safe from harm." He frowned. "What was your profession?"

"Librarian, sayyid," Malik said. His knees had begun to ache from the cold stone, but he made no attempt to rise.

"You can read?" Al-Ghurab did nothing to hide his surprise. .

"Yes, sayyid." Malik tried hard to mimic the monotone of a good servant. He had no idea if he succeeded.

Ziri al-Ghurab looked highly sceptical at this. He gestured to Marîd."And the boy?"

"He is training," said Malik.

"Training? How much training does it take to become a librarian?"

"You would be surprised," Malik murmured. He risked a closer glance at the Master's lieutenant. Like his master, al-Ghurab was Berber through and through, though, unlike his master, his face was deeply weather-lined. He wore kohl around his eyes to protect them from the sun, giving his face a sinister aspect. A mail-shirt covered his stained white robe. His turban was red and his boots were of yellow leather.

Al-Walid may be the Master, Malik thought, but his companion would be the more dangerous man in a fight.

Al-Ghurab spared Malik the most meagre of glances. "Take him to the castle," he ordered Nayir. "He will be of some use in the library. Then return here."

"Thank you, lord," Malik murmured while his heart spat insults.

The guards bowed deeply. Malik felt gloved hands on his shoulders, jerking him to his feet. Another guard tapped Marîd on his shoulder and the boy started as if waking from a dream.

"May the Father of Understanding guide you," al-Walid said.

The guards chorused a reply. Malik joined them reluctantly. "May the Father of understanding guide you," he repeated. The words were harder to say than he'd thought. They left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Al-Walid and his henchman bowed and returned to their conversation.

The guards took Malik up the hill and into the fortress itself. They set a slow and monotonous pace. Malik used the time to look around. He had thought that the gardens of the castle held only apple trees, but he realised that he had been wrong. There were oranges as well as apples, roses, myrtle trees, and jasmine. Malik looked more closely at the fruit and realized that the oranges were nearly ready to ripen.

Have I travelled so long? he wondered, and glanced around.

The Templar gardens did not lack for water, despite their desert surroundings. Streams trickled between every flowerbed. Water cascaded between the terraces into pools stocked with goldfish and carp. The pools cooled the air and made the heat of the sun bearable, even pleasant. The scent of flowers hung sweet and heavy in the evening air.

It all made Masyaf's garden resemble a patch of scrubby brush.

But we had more on our mind than gardening, Malik thought. He looked up at the low adobe walls of the fortress. And Masyaf is far more defensible than this pleasure-garden, pretty as it is. I would choose high walls over flowers any day.

Despite his initial contempt, the castle's adobe walls loomed high above their heads as they approached. They entered through a small gate in the south wall; an altogether less ornate affair than the main northern gate, though not, as Malik noticed, less defensible. The gatehouse was a massive brickwork block with a keystone arch in the centre. Its stones were fitted together so tightly that it would be impossible to squeeze a knife-blade between them, and the entrance passageway twice turned through right-angles to confuse intruders. Once or twice Malik thought he sensed people watching them from between thin arrow-slits high up in the passage walls, but he saw no flicker of movement.

The buildings inside the castle walls were less impressive. This was the servants' domain, and although the kitchen maids and water-boys walked without a spring in their step and kept their eyes upon the ground, it was as busy as the Grand Bazaar at Cairo. People rushed in all directions. Nayir caught the ear of a small boy as he hurried past, intent on some errand. "Master's orders," he said. "Take these to the library."

The boy nodded and gestured to Malik and Marîd to follow him. He led them up a flight of creaking rush-floored stairs to a narrow door so low that Malik, who was not a tall man, had to duck his head to enter.

As he straightened from his uncomfortable crouch the boy ducked back through the low door and closed it behind him. Cleverly camouflaged, the door blended into the adobe so well that even Malik, who was used to noticing things out of the ordinary, could hardly make out its outline. A servant's door, he realized. Doubtless there is a more impressive entrance elsewhere.

He brushed grains of dirt from his sleeves and looked around.

The first thing he saw was books.

There were manuscripts everywhere; more than Malik had ever seen in Al Mualim's library at Masyaf. More, perhaps, than existed in the fabled rooms of the Bait-al-Hikma in Baghdad.  Each set of shelves –and there were many shelves-were nearly as tall as the room. Every bookcase was topped with a cornice of carved wood that fanned out to protect the books from insects or mud from the adobe ceiling. Books filled every niche.

Malik walked over to the nearest shelf. Marîd trailed behind him. He picked up a book and turned it over in his hands, admiring the binding. The book was made of thin pasteboard sheets, stitched with silk and bound in leather. Embossed and gilded patterns curled around its cover.

Malik opened the book carefully. The text was in Arabic; a translation of an older Greek work on rhetoric. He closed the cover gently and opened another just as elaborate. This one was an atlas of the known world annotated in elaborate Kufic script. Malik was struck by how little it resembled the map shown to him by the Eden fragment.

He picked up another book, flicking through it quickly. Then another, and another, and another. The books were written in Arabic, in Syriac, in Latin, and in what he was pretty sure were Greek or Aramaic. Their topics were diverse as their tongues. Rhetoric, politics, town planning, medicine. A long treatise on artillery. Another on siege warfare.

Everything you need, Malik thought, to build a perfect world.

He stepped back to survey the spines of the books and realized that there was something very odd about the collection. There were no religious texts, or, at least, none that he could see.

He heard an angry voice behind him. "What are you doing here?"

Malik spun. An old man advanced towards him. The faded brown wool of his robe blended with the adobe walls. His bare feet made no sound on the carpeted floor.

"What are you doing here?" the old man repeated. His voice was undoubtedly aggressive, but his eyes looked simply tired. The effect was not threatening. Malik would have picked him up with one hand. Marîd could probably have picked him up with one hand. He looked around for the boy, but he was nowhere in sight.

"We just arrived," Malik said. "You're the librarian?"

The old man nodded. He coughed and spat into a scrap of rag that he pulled from his robe. "Who are you?"

"We're your new assistants," Malik said.

The librarian regarded Malik without curiosity. There was no surprise in his milky eyes. The effects of the Eden fragment sat lightly on him, Malik realized, but they affected him all the same. "The Master sent you?"

Malik nodded.

"You can read? You have some skill?"

"I was a bookseller in Jerusalem," Malik told him. "I made maps."

"Then you'll be useful. Your name?"

"Malik," said Malik.

"I am Abu Tariq," the old man said. "You might as well start now. I'll show you the place," He waved a skinny arm. "This is the private library of the Master and his aides. Nobody else comes in here without the permission of the Master."

Malik nodded. From the richness of the room he had expected nothing else.

"That's part of your job. Don't let anyone else in. For you first task...hmm, let's see." He paused, then pointed. "That trunk over there. Sort the books. Shelve anything useful. Leave poetry, tales-all that outdated useless stuff-in the box. It'll go on the fire later."

 "Why?"

Abu Tariq looked surprised. "Because those are the Master's orders."

"Of course," Malik agreed hurriedly. 

"May the Father of Understanding guide you in your task," Abu Tariq said.

Malik nodded. The librarian frowned placidly, and did not walk away. Malik realised that he was waiting for a response.

"May the Father of Understanding guide you," he said reluctantly.

The old librarian nodded and wandered off. Malik went looking for the trunk.

He found both the truck and Marîd concealed behind a tall set of shelves. The trunk was large enough to hide a dead body. Marîd perched cross-legged on its lid. Malik swatted at him with his hand. "Get off," he muttered, "The librarian's an old man, but we must be cautious. Don't say or do anything that might get you into trouble. Understand?"

The boy did not answer.

Malik turned to him in mild irritation. "Did you hear?"

To his surprise, his apprentice gave him only a vacant smile. "Certainly," he agreed. "For the Master teaches that treachery may be concealed even in the hearts of ordinary folk. Even the guise of an innocent dove may mask a serpent."   

Malik blinked. He had fielded many strange replies from Marîd over the months, but none had come in the form of Templar rhetoric. "Marîd?" he said irritably. "Act like an Assassin."

The boy blinked."An Assassin?" he asked. "Why should I do that?

Because you are one, Malik thought. "Just do as I say," he snapped. "And-"

Marîd interrupted him. "The Assassins are nothing but the jackals of Masyaf," he said in a voice that was not his own. "They are slaves to a lost cause, and they have not even the wit to realise it. We shall take their castle by force, and kill them all. It is our duty."

Malik didn't even think. He simply dealt with the threat as he had dealt with so many before. He straightened from the chest of books, grabbed the front of the boy's ragged jellaba with his good hand and lifted him up to the low window-ledge. The library was high on the second floor of the castle. The gardens dropped away below them. Peasants toiled like toy men in the dust. Marîd's body was as limp as a rag doll. He did not look down. He did not even blink. 

"This has gone too far," Malik snarled.

Marîd did not seem frightened in the least. "You will never understand," he told Malik. "But I-I have pledged myself to another cause. We will have peace...Al-Walid will have peace."

Malik looked over the boy's shoulder and down at the ground far below. Marîd's travel-stained rags were the same dusty colour as the wall's adobe bricks. Nobody would notice him from this far away. Even if they did see something, they'd think it just a tattered strip of cloth. By the time they realized otherwise it would be too late, and if questioned, Malik could always say the boy had fallen.

 "Enough!" he snapped. "Who do you serve?"

"I serve the Templars," Marîd said. The wind tugged at his hair. The ragged scarf fell from his neck and drifted away in the wind.

"Then you're a traitor."

"I'm not a traitor. Altaïr has betrayed us! He's closed our eyes to the truth!"

"It's not the truth!" Malik hissed. "The Eden fragment's clouded your mind!" He dragged the boy an inch further over the sill, twisting his hand in his clothing to get a good grip.

Marîd only smiled. "My mind is clear. My conscience, too."

"Speak sense-"

"I'm not afraid to die."

Malik held the boy at arm's length. Marîd's calves and his dirty feet were the only part of his body now touching the sill. "You'll die, then."

"I am not afrai-"

Malik let go.

The boy made no move to grasp at Malik's hand as he dropped away. He fell silently backwards. His mouth was an oval of surprise. The tattered hem of his robe slipped over the windowsill.

Malik waited only a fraction of a second before he snatched the boy's ankle. He leaned out of the window and held on tightly, praying that the boy's leg would not slip out of his grasp. Marîd jolted to a halt. His body hung head downwards in the cool evening air, greasy hair obscuring his face. Beneath him, a nightingale sang softly as the peasant gardeners toiled on.

"Who do you serve?" Malik shouted.

Marîd gasped in terror. His hands clawed at empty air. He sniffed and began to sob.

Malik sighed in relief. He let out a breath he had not realised he had been holding. His fingers locked tightly around Marîd's bony ankle as he hauled the boy back up to the sill and deposited him face-first on the library carpet. Marîd's body had lost its awful stillness. He curled into a ball on the floor and cried harder.

Malik let him weep for a few moments before he poked him with his foot. "Get up."

Marîd ignored him. He pressed his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.

Tears soaked into his cheap robe. Malik reached down and yanked the boy to his feet. When Marîd was more or less standing he repeated, "Who do you serve?"

The boy sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. His reply was inaudible. Malik slapped him on the head, which provoked a fresh flood of tears but at least produced an answer. "The Assassins-"

"Then act like it." Malik said curtly. "Though it's not your fault. The Templars have a way of controlling human minds." He recalled the brief adoration he had felt for the Templar Master. "It's hard to fight."

"You did," Marîd snivelled.

"Only just. And it wasn't easy." One thing he had no intention of telling the boy was just how hard it had been. "Besides, I promised your father I'd look after you."

The boy snivelled. "He wasn't my father. And," he glanced up accusingly, "you nearly dropped me."

Malik shrugged again. "Sometimes fear combats the brainwashing," he said. He'd seen it once before, in the Masyaf villagers affected by the powers of Al Mualim's Eden fragment. Faced with fidai'i steel or the power of the Apple, several of the villagers had broken down as base instinct warred against compulsion.  Many hadn't.

"Well, it worked," Marîd said indistinctly as he wiped tears from his eyes. "I'm sorry," he added.

"Don't apologise. Half of Masyaf were the same, back in the wars."

Marîd met Malik's eyes for the first time since he had seen the Master. "What did you do?"

"We killed them." Malik told him.

Marîd sniffed. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and, with the boundless elasticity of youth, seemed to forget about the whole episode. He stared around him with wide eyes at the stacks of books. "Where are we?"

"In the castle," Malik told him. "If nothing else, the Templars' power demonstrated that there is an Eden fragment here. We shall find it."

The boy blinked. "We're in the Templar castle?"

Malik nodded. "Yes."

"Then we'll steal it? I want to hurt them. I-I was afraid. Assassins don't fear death. Not ever."

Malik sighed. The Assassins made precious little allowances for ten-year-olds, but they made some. "It suits us to pretend that we do not," he said. "In truth, though, it is braver to face fear and overcome it than to never fear at all. We will have our revenge. For now we must masquerade as scholars in the service of al-Walid and the Templars."

The boy looked bemused. "The castle," he said hesitantly. "I remember it. A massive building. What do we do now, Master?"

"I have told you before," Malik said automatically, "that I am not your Master. And comments like that will kill us both soon enough if you do not learn to hold your tongue." He flipped open the lid of the chest and picked up a richly bound book. He slid his thumb under the flap of the blinding and flicked it open.

Marîd nodded. "We'll fool them all, Mas-I mean, Malik," he hastily amended. "Do you think we'll succeed?"

Malik wondered whether to tell the boy the truth. "Maybe," he said.

Marîd nodded in satisfaction and peered down at the book in Malik's hand. "What's that language?"

"Latin," Malik said briefly. As he turned over the book's thin pages, he noticed a verse which seemed familiar.

'Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom,' he read, 'and spread his wings towards the south?

Does the eagle soar at your command, and build his nest on high?

He dwells on a high cliff and stays there at night; a rocky crag is his stronghold

From thee he seeks his food, his eyes detect it from afar.

His young ones feast on blood, and where the slain are, there is he.*'

Malik smiled.

"You know," he said, half to Marîd and half to himself, "I think we will be fortunate."

 

To be continued...


*Job 39:26 to 39:30.