Revelations

TWO

The eagle still wheeled in the sky. A pale blue sky, bleached by the sun, though the sun was a little lower. The bird of prey, a dark silhouette, turning and turning, but with purpose. Its shadow fell on the bare rocks far below, torn jagged by them as it passed over.

Ezio watched through the narrow window-no more than a gash in the thick stone-and his eyes were as restless as the movements of the bird. His thoughts were restless, too. Had he traveled so far and for so long, only for it all to come to this?

He clenched his fists, and his muscles felt the absence of the hidden-blades, which had for so long stood him in such good stead.

But he had an idea of where they’d stowed his weapons, after they’d ambushed him and overpowered him and brought him here. A grim smile formed on his lips. Those troops, the old enemy-how surprised they’d been that such an old lion could still have so much fight in him.

And he knew this castle. From charts and diagrams. He had studied them so well that they were printed on his mind.

But here he was, in a cell in one of the topmost towers of the great fortress of Masyaf, the citadel that had once been the stronghold of the Assassins, long since abandoned, and now fallen to the Templars. Here he was-alone, unarmed, hungry, and thirsty, his clothes grimy and torn, awaiting every moment the footfall of his executioners. But not about to go quietly. He knew why the Templars were there; he had to stop them.

And they hadn’t killed him yet.

He kept his eyes on the eagle. He could see every feather, every pinion, the fanned rudder of the tail, speckled black-brown and white, like his own beard. The pure white wingtips.

He thought back. He traced the route that had brought him there-to this.

Other towers, other battlements. Like the ones at Viana, from which he had flung Cesare Borgia to his doom. That had been in the year of Our Lord 1507. How long ago was that? Four years. It might as well have been four centuries, it seemed so distant. And in the meantime, other villains, other would-be masters of the world, had come and gone, in search of the Mystery, in search of the Power, and for him, a prisoner at last, the battle to counter them had gone on.

The battle. His whole life.

The eagle wheeled and turned, its movements concentrated. Ezio watched it, knowing that it had located prey and was focusing on it. What life could there be down there? But the village that supported the castle, crouched low and unhappy in its shadow, would have livestock, and even a scrap of cultivated land somewhere nearby. A goat, maybe, down there among the tumble of grey rocks that littered the low, surrounding hills; either a young one, too inexperienced, or an old one, too tired, or one that had been injured. The eagle flew against the sun, its silhouette momentarily blotted out by the incandescent light; and then, tightening its circle, it hung, poised, at last, hanging there in the vast blue arena, before it swooped down, crashing through the air like a thunderbolt, and out of sight.

Ezio turned away from the window and looked around the cell. A bed, hard dark wood, just planks on it, no bedding, a stool, and a table. No crucifix on the wall, and nothing else except the plain pewter bowl and spoon which contained the still-untasted gruel they’d given him. That, and a wooden beaker of water, also untasted. For all his thirst and hunger, Ezio feared drugs that might weaken him, render him powerless when the moment came. And it was all too possible that the Templars would have drugged the food and drink they gave him.

He turned around in the narrow cell, but the rough stone walls gave him neither comfort nor hope. There was nothing here he could use to escape. He sighed. There were other Assassins, others in the Brotherhood who knew of his mission, who had wanted to accompany him, even, despite his insistence that he travel alone. Perhaps, when no news came, they would take up the challenge. But then, perhaps, it would be too late.

The question was, how much did the Templars already know? How much of the secret did they already have in their possession?

His quest, which had now come to such an abrupt halt at the moment of its fruition, had begun soon after his return to Rome, where he had bid farewell to his companions, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli, on his forty-eighth birthday, Midsummer Day. Niccolo was to return to Florence, Leonardo to Milan. Leonardo had spoken of taking up a pressing offer of much-needed patronage from Francis, heir apparent to the throne of France, and a residence in Amboise, on the River Loire. At least, that was what his letters had revealed to Ezio.

Ezio smiled at the memory of his friend. Leonardo, whose mind was ever teeming with new ideas though it always took him a while to get around to them. He thought ruefully of the hidden-blade, which had been shattered in the fight when they’d ambushed him. Leonardo-how he missed him!-the one man he could have really trusted to mend it. But at least Leonardo had sent him the plans he’d made for a new device, which he called a parachute. Ezio had had it constructed back in Rome, and it was packed with his kit, and he doubted if the Templars would make much sense of it. He would put it to good use as soon as he got a chance.

If he got a chance.

He steeled himself against dark thoughts.

But there was nothing to do, no means of escape, until they came to get him, to hang him. He would have to plan what to do then. He imagined that, as so often in the past, he would have to extemporize. In the meantime, he’d try to rest his body. Still fit, he’d made sure of that in training before this journey, and the journey itself had hardened him. But he was glad-even in these circumstances-of the chance to rest after that fight.

It had all started with a letter.

Under the benevolent eye of Pope Julius II, who had aided him in his vanquishing of the Borgia family, Ezio had rebuilt and restructured the Assassins’ Brotherhood in Rome and established his power base there.

For a while at least, the Templars were in abeyance, and Ezio left the running of operations in the capable hands of his sister Claudia; but the Assassins remained vigilant. They knew that the Templars would regroup, secretly, elsewhere, insatiable in their quest for the instruments by which they could at last control the world in accordance with their somber tenets.

They were bested for the moment, but the beast was not dead.

Ezio drew comfort and satisfaction from the fact-and he shared this dark knowledge with Machiavelli and Leonardo alone-that the Apple of Eden, which had fallen into his care, and which had caused so much anguish and death in the battle for its possession, was buried and hidden deep in the vaults below the Church of San Nicola in Carcere, in a secret sealed room whose location they had marked only with the sacred symbols of the Brotherhood-which only a future Assassin would be able to discern, let alone decipher. The greatest Piece of Eden was safely concealed from the ambitious grasp of the Templars-as Ezio hoped, forever.

After the damage wrought to the Brotherhood by the Borgias, there had been much to retrieve, much to put in order, and to this task Ezio had devoted himself, uncomplainingly, although he was far more inclined to open air and action than to poring over papers in dusty archives. That was a job more suited to his late father’s secretary, Giulio, or to the bookish Machiavelli; but Machiavelli was busy commanding the Florentine militia these days, and Giulio was long dead.

Still, Ezio reflected, if he hadn’t saddled himself with the responsibility for what was to him a dreary task, he might never have found the letter. And if another had, that person might not have guessed its significance.

The letter, which he’d found in a leather satchel, brittle with age, was from Ezio’s father, Giovanni, to his brother Mario, the man who’d taught Ezio the art of war and initiated him into the Brotherhood three long decades earlier. Mario. Ezio flinched at the memory. Mario, who had died at the cruel and cowardly hands of Cesare Borgia in the wake of the battle of Monteriggioni.

Mario had long since been avenged, but the letter Ezio found opened a new chapter, and its contents proffered him the chance of a new mission. It was 1509 when he’d found it, and he’d just turned fifty; he knew that the chance of new missions seldom came to men of his age. Besides, the letter offered him the hope and the challenge of closing the gates of opportunity on the Templars forever.

Palazzo Auditore

Firenze iv febbraio MCDLVIII

Dear Brother-

The forces against us are gathering strength, and there is a man in Rome who has taken command of our enemies who is perhaps the greatest power you and I will ever have to reckon with. For this reason, I impart to you, under the seal of utmost secrecy, the following information. If fate should overtake me, ensure-with your life, if necessary-that this information never falls into our enemies’ hands.

There is, as you know, a castle called Masyaf in Syria, which was once the seat of our Brotherhood. There, over two centuries ago, our then Mentor, Altair Ibn-La’Ahad, greatest of our Order, established a library deep beneath the fortress.

I say no more now. Discretion dictates that what else I have to tell you of this must be in conversation and never written down.

This is a quest I would have longed to accomplish myself, but there is no time now. Our enemies press upon us, and we have no time except to fight back.

Your Brother Giovanni Auditore

With this letter was another sheet of paper-a tantalizing fragment, clearly in his father’s handwriting but equally clearly not by him-a translation of a much older document, also there with it, on parchment that accorded very closely with that on which the original Codex pages, uncovered by Ezio and his companions nearly thirty years earlier, had been written: I have spent days with the artifact now. Or has it been weeks? Months? The others come from time to time, offering food or distraction; and though I know in my heart I should separate myself from these dark studies, I find it more and more difficult to assume my normal duties. Malik has been supportive, but even now that old edge returns to his voice. Still, my work must continue. This Apple of Eden must be understood. Its function is simple. Elementary, even: dominion. Control. But the process… the methods and means it employs… THESE are fascinating. It is temptation incarnate. Those subjected to its glow are promised all that they desire. It asks only one thing in return: complete and total obedience. And who can truly refuse? I remember my own moment of weakness when confronted by Al Mualim, my Mentor, and my confidence was shaken by his words. He, who had been like a father, was now revealed to be my greatest enemy. Just the briefest flicker of doubt was all he needed to creep into my mind. But I vanquished his phantoms-restored my self-confidence-and sent him from this world. I freed myself from his control. But now I wonder, is this true? For here I sit-desperate to understand that which I intended to destroy. I sense it is more than just a weapon, a tool for manipulating men’s minds. Or is it? Perhaps it’s simply following its design: showing me what I desire most. Knowledge… Always hovering at the edge. Just out of reach. Beckoning. Promising. Tempting…

The old manuscript tailed off there, the rest lost, and, indeed, the parchment was so brittle with age that its edges crumbled as he touched it.

Ezio understood little of it, but some of it was so familiar that his skin tingled, even his scalp, at the memory.

It did again, as Ezio recalled it, sitting in his cell in the prison tower at Masyaf, watching the sun set on what might be his last day on earth.

He visualized the old manuscript in his mind. It was this, more than anything, that had determined him to travel east, to Masyaf.

Darkness fell quickly. The sky was cobalt blue. Stars already speckled it.

For no reason, Ezio’s thoughts turned to the young man in white. The man he’d seemed to see in the lull in the fighting. Who had appeared and disappeared so mysteriously, like a vision, but who had, somehow, been real, and who had, somehow, communicated with him.