Assassin's Creed: Revelations (38 page)

The numbers around the figure shifted and pulsed. And started to flee from one another without being able to get free—in a kind of nightmarish entropy. But the figure became clearer. A man. Taller and broader than most men. Ezio was reminded of one of the statues of Greek gods Michelangelo had shown him when the Borgias’ collection had been seized by Pope Julius. An old god, though. Zeus or Poseidon. A full beard. Eyes that shone with an unearthly wisdom. Around him, the trailing digits and equations ceased to battle with one another and finally began to drift away, faster and faster, until they were gone, and the world was gone, and all that was left was this—man. What else was Ezio to call him?

Ezio looked at the creature but it was watching the very last trailing formulae as they scurried away through the ether.

The voice when it next spoke seemed oddly human, a little unsure of itself.

He looked at Ezio quizzically. But there was something else—profound sadness, and a kind of paternal pride.

Jupiter smiled.

Light slowly drained from the entire room, and once again a ghostly, blue, revolving globe came into view directly behind Jupiter, and slowly grew in size until it occupied almost the entire chamber.

Small dots began appearing on the huge, revolving globe, one after another.

Ezio saw one of the dots among the many flash brightly. It was near the eastern seaboard of a vast continent he couldn’t imagine really existed, except that he knew that his friend Amerigo Vespucci had discovered a coastline there a decade earlier, and he had seen the Waldseemüller map depicting all the discovered world. But all that the map showed was farther south. Could there be more? A great land there? It seemed so unlikely.

And Ezio saw now that beams of light were beginning to stretch like lines across the slowing, spinning globe from all the other points marked on it to the one on the strange new continent, and went on until the entire world was crisscrossed with a filigree of lines of light.

And then Ezio’s point of view seemed to change as he watched the great image of the world; and he seemed to plummet toward it, down through space, until it seemed as if he were about to crash into the ground, which rose to meet him, coming alarmingly close. But then—then it was as if he were lifted up, at the last moment, and was skimming along close to the ground, then down again, down through a shaft like a mineshaft until he emerged in an immense underground building, like a temple or a palace hall.

And, indeed, now Ezio was in the great hall, in the mysterious vault in the mysterious land—or seemed to be there—and there, near Jupiter, stood Minerva and Juno, whom Ezio had indeed encountered before . . .

The last statement was made in so simple and matter-of-fact a tone that Ezio was taken aback by it. He saw Minerva, heavy-hearted, and Juno, angry, look on as Jupiter put into action a complex mechanism that triggered the great doors of the place to close and seal themselves shut. And then—

Then a great wave of indescribable power hit the upper vault of heaven and lit up the sky like ten thousand northern lights. Ezio seemed to be standing amid hundreds of thousands of people, in an elegant city and all looking up at the supernatural display above them. But the light breeze that played on them changed, from zephyr to storm, then to hurricane, within less than a minute. The people looked at one another in disbelief, then panic, and they scurried away to safety.

The sky, still ablaze with waves of green fire, began to crackle and spark with lightning. Thunder rolled and crashed, though there was not a cloud to be seen, and bolts smashed from the heavens onto trees, buildings, and people alike. Debris flew through the air, destroying everything in its path.

Next, a colossal tremor caused the ground to shudder. Those left in the open lost their footing and before they could rise were struck down by rocks and stones carried like balls of paper by the wind. The earth shook again, more violently this time, and the screams and cries of the afflicted were drowned by the crack of lightning and the deafening scream of the gale. Survivors in the open strove to find shelter, some fighting to keep their balance by clinging to the sides of whatever buildings still stood, as they clawed their way along.

But, amid the general devastation, great temples stood firm, untouched by the catastrophe around them, bearing tribute to the technical ingenuity of those who had built them. But another great tremor rippled the ground, then another. A broad highway split in two along its length, and people fled from the growing abyss that cleaved it. The sky by then was on fire, arcs of lightning rushing from one horizon to the other, and the upper reaches of the firmament seemed about to implode.

Then it appeared to Ezio that he saw the earth from afar again, engulfed in a gargantuan solar flare, trapped in a web of gigantic fireballs; then, unthinkably, the world shifted from its axis, rolling over. The elegant city, the refined, sophisticated collection of tall buildings and manicured parks, was riven with gaping wounds as the earth split and cracked under it, ripping down previously untouched edifices and smashing them to pieces. The few remaining people in the remains of the streets screamed, one last despairing cry of agony, as the shift in the earth’s poles left the planet’s surface vulnerable to the deadly radiation of solar flares. The last structures were swept away like houses of cards in the wind.

And then—just as suddenly as it had started—all became quiet. The northern lights ceased just as a candle’s flame dies when a man blows it out, and, almost immediately, the wind calmed. But the devastation was complete. Almost nothing had been spared. Fires and smoke, darkness and decay, held illimitable dominion over all.

Through the miasma, Jupiter’s voice came to Ezio. Or to someone like him. Nothing was certain anymore:

The dust storms were clearing, the molten lava was cooling. Time accelerated as tiny shoots broke through the ground and reestablished themselves. The entrance to an underground vault opened, and people of the First Civilization emerged, and they, in turn, began to rebuild. But their numbers were few and did not increase.

Over many centuries they diminished, until there were only a few hundred left, then a few dozen, then none...

What they had rebuilt was claimed by the conquering forests. Their new buildings disappeared in their turn, devoured by time. A low-hilled, richly forested landscape enveloped those great expanses not covered by plains. And then, people—but different from the First Comers. Humans now. Those whom the First Comers had created as slaves would now, free, become their heirs. Some indeed had been taken as lovers by the First Comers, and from them a small line of people with more than human powers had emerged.

But the true inheritors were the humans. The first in this unknown land were men and women with deeply tanned skins and long, straight, black hair. Proud peoples who hunted strange, dark brown, wild cattle, riding bareback on tough ponies, using bows and arrows. People who lived in separate tribes and fought one another but with little bloodshed.

Then more people came. Paler people, whose clothes were different and covered them more fully. People who came on ships from Europe, across the Mare Occiden-talis. People who hunted down the others and drove them from their lands, establishing in turn their own farms, villages, and, again at last, towns and cities to rival those of the lost civilization, which had disappeared into the earth many millennia before.

Mark this and remember. It is never your choice to give up the fight for justice. Even when it seems that it can never be won, that all hope is lost, the fight, the
fight
ensures the survival of justice, the survival of the world. You live balanced on the edge of a cliff, you cannot help that. Your job is to ensure that the balance never tips too far to the wrong side. And there is one more thing you can do that will make certain it never does: You can love.

 

 

Ezio clung to the desk. Next to him, Altaïr still sat in his chair. Nothing had moved on the desktop, not a sheet of parchment had stirred, and the stump of candle burned with a steady light.

He did not know how he had got from the recess to the desk, but now he retraced the few steps. The Apple still rested on its pedestal within the alcove, cold and dead. He could hardly make out its contours in the gloom. Its dust-covered box, he noticed, lay on the desktop.

He gathered himself together and crossed the great chamber again, making for the corridor that would lead back to the sunlight, and to Sofia.

But at the entrance to the great library, he turned once more. Far away now, as it seemed, he looked for one last time at Altaïr, sitting for eternity in the ghost of his library.

“Farewell, Mentor,” he said.

SEVENTY-EIGHT

Reaching the outer doorway, Ezio found the lever by the lintel and pulled it. Obediently, the green door slid down into the ground. And there was Sofia, reading a book, waiting for him.

As he emerged, she smiled at him and stood, and came to him and took his hand.

“You came back,” she said, unable to disguise the sheer relief in her voice.

“I promised I would.”

“Have you found what you sought?”

“I have found—enough.”

She hesitated. “I thought—”

“What?”

“I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Sometimes our worst premonitions are the least reliable.”

She looked at him. “I must be mad. I think I like you even when you’re being pompous.” She paused. “What do we do now?”

Ezio smiled. “We go home,” he said.

Eternal light, you sojourn in yourself alone.
Alone, you know yourself. Known to yourself,
you, knowing, love and smile on your own being.

—DANTE,
PARADISO

SEVENTY-NINE

Ezio was quiet for much of the journey back to Constantinople. Sofia, remembering Selim’s dire warning, questioned the wisdom of his returning there at all, but he merely said, “There is still work to be done.”

She wondered about him—he seemed so withdrawn, almost ill. But when the golden domes and white minarets once again appeared on the northern seaboard, his spirits lifted, and she saw the old gleam back in his dark grey eyes.

They returned to her shop. It was almost unrecognizable. Azize had modernized it, and all the books were ranged neatly on their shelves, in impeccable order. Azize was almost apologetic when she handed Sofia back the keys, but Sofia had mostly noticed that the shop was full of customers.

“Dogan wishes to see you, Mentor,” Azize said as she greeted Ezio. “And be reassured. Prince Suleiman knows of your return and has provided you with a safe-conduct. But his father is adamant that you should not remain long.”

Ezio and Sofia exchanged a look. They had been together awhile, ever since she had insisted on accompanying him on his journey to Masyaf—a request which he’d agreed to, to her surprise, with no objection at all. Indeed, he had seemed to welcome it.

With Dogan, Ezio made sure that the Turkish Assassins had a firm base in the city, with Suleiman’s tacit agreement and under his unofficial protection. The work had already started in purging the city and the empire of any last trace of renegade Ottomans and Byzantines, now leaderless, following the deaths of Ahmet and Manuel; and the Janissaries, under Selim’s iron hand, knew no more dissent within their ranks. There was no need of any since their preferred prince had made himself their sultan.

 

 

As for the Templars, their power bases in Italy and, now, in the East, broken, they had disappeared. But Ezio knew that the volcano was dormant, not extinct. His troubled thoughts turned to the Far East—the Orient—and he wondered what the knowledge imparted to him by Jupiter and the ghostly globe might mean for the undiscovered continents—if they existed—far away across the Western Sea.