“Shoot him!”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?”

“Just kill the bastard!”

They careered on downstream. Ezio had managed by then to grasp the tiller of his raft and bring it under control, all the while having to duck and dive to avoid the musket balls that cannoned toward him, though the pitch and roll of their raft made it all but impossible for the soldiers to take serious aim. Then one of the barrels aboard worked free of its ropes and rolled around the deck, knocking two soldiers into the torrent—one of them their tillerman. The raft bucked wildly, throwing another man into the black water, then smashed into the side of the embankment. The survivors scrambled to the bank. Ezio looked up to the high vault, which ran perhaps twenty feet above the river. In the gloom, he could see that a taut rope had been slung the length of the roof, and no doubt barges or rafts were often hooked to it to guide them down the river. You’d only need one person aboard with a pole to unhook and rehook round each of the eyelets to which the rope was affixed at regular intervals.

And Ezio could see that the rope, following the river’s downhill course, sloped gradually downward, too. Just enough for what he had planned.

Bracing himself, Ezio steered his own raft for the embankment, and as it smashed into the one he’d been pursuing, he leapt from it onto the stone pathway at the river’s side.

By that time, the surviving soldiers were already some way ahead of him, running for their lives—or to summon reinforcements. Ezio had no time to waste.

Working fast, he swapped his gun for his hookblade, scrambled up the side wall of the cavern, and threw himself toward the rope over the river. He had just enough momentum to catch it with his hookblade, and soon he was shooting downstream over the water, far faster than the soldiers could run though he had to unhook and rehook with split-second timing at each eyelet in the roof to avoid falling into the roaring torrent beneath.

As he caught up with the soldiers, he reversed his first maneuver and unhooked at the crucial moment, throwing his body sideways so that he landed on the embankment just ahead of the Templars. They stopped dead, panting, facing him.

“He is a madman,” said the first Templar.

“This is no man—this is a demon,” a second cried.

“Let’s see if demons bleed,” bellowed a braver comrade, coming at Ezio, his sword whirling in his hand.

Ezio performed a hook-and-roll over his back and pitched him, while he was still off balance, into the river. Three soldiers remained. The fight had all but gone out of them, but Ezio knew he could not afford to be merciful. The ensuing clash was short and bloody, and left Ezio nursing a gashed left arm; and three corpses lay before him.

Gulping air, he made his way back to the sealed door. They had come a long way downriver, and it took him a good ten minutes to regain the jetty where the rafts had originally been moored. But at least he knew that he need be in no immediate fear of pursuit; and the barrel of gunpowder was still lodged where the Templar soldiers had placed it.

Replacing his hookblade with his pistol once more, Ezio loaded it, chose a position upstream, from where he could take cover behind a projecting buttress, took careful aim, and fired.

There was the crack of the pistol and the hiss of the ball as it shot toward the barrel, even the thud as it struck home, but then there was, for what seemed an eternity, silence.

Nothing happened.

But then . . .

The explosion in those confines was like a thunderclap, and Ezio was deafened, thinking, as tiny stones rained down all around him, that he might have brought the roof in, that he might have irreparably damaged whatever was behind the door. But when the dust settled, he could see that for all the force of the explosion, the sealed entrance was still only partially breached.

Enough, however, for him to look within it and see the familiar plinth, on which, to his intense relief, the circular obsidian key, partner to the others he had collected, rested undamaged. But he had no time to relax. Even as he reached for it, he noticed, emanating from it, the glow that he had experienced with the others. As it grew in intensity, he tried, this time, to resist its power. He felt undermined, unsettled by the strange visions that succeeded the blinding light he had come to expect.

But it was no use, and he felt himself once more surrendering to a power far greater than his own.

FIFTY-FOUR

To Ezio, it appeared that twenty long years had passed. The landscape was one he knew, and there, rising from it like a giant claw, stood the by-now-familiar castle of Masyaf. Not far from its gate, a group of three Assassins sat near a blazing campfire . . .

The Assassins’ faces were those of people whose better dreams have gone dark. When they spoke, their voices were quiet, weary.

“They say he screams in his sleep, calling out for his father. Ahmad Sofian,” said one of them.

One of the men scoffed bitterly. “So, Cemal, he calls out for his daddy, does he? What a miserable man Abbas is.”

They had their faces to the fire and did not at first notice the old, cowled man in white robes who was approaching through the darkness.

“It is not our place to judge, Teragani,” said the second man, coldly.

“It certainly is, Tazim,” Cemal cut in. “If our Mentor has gone mad, I want to know about it.”

The old man had come close, and they became aware of him.

“Hush, Cemal,” said Tazim. Turning to greet the newcomer, he said, “Masa’il kher.”

The old man’s voice was as dry as a dead leaf. “Water,” he said.

Teragani stood and passed him a small gourd which he had dipped in a water jar next to him.

“Sit. Drink,” said Cemal.

“Many thanks,” said the old man.

The others watched him as he drank quietly.

“What brings you here, old man?” asked Tazim, after their guest had drunk his fill.

The stranger thought for a moment before he spoke. Then he said, “Pity Abbas, but do not mock him. He has lived as an orphan most of his life and been shamed by his family’s legacy.”

Tazim looked shocked at this statement, but Teragani smiled quietly. He stole a glance at the old man’s hand and saw that his left-hand ring finger was missing. So, unless it was an extraordinary coincidence, the man was an Assassin. Teragani looked covertly at the lined, gaunt face. There was something familiar about it . . .

“Abbas is desperate for power because he is powerless ,” the old man continued.

“But he is our Mentor!” Tazim cried. “And, unlike Al Mualim or Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad, he never betrayed us!”