She peered at what he had shown her. “I believe it is!” she said, looking up, excited.
“And here”-Ezio turned to the door and looked at the markings near the slot he had just been examining-“here, if I am not mistaken, is a diagram of the constellation of Cancer.”
“But that is the constellation next to Leo, isn’t it? And isn’t it also the sign which precedes Leo in the Zodiac?”
“Which was invented by-”
“The Chaldeans!”
“Let’s see if this theory holds water,” said Ezio, looking at the next slot. “Here is Aquarius.”
“How apt,” Sofia joked, but she looked seriously at the keys. At last she held one up. “Aquarius is flanked by Pisces and Capricorn,” she said. “But the one that comes after Aquarius is Pisces. And here-I think-it is!”
“Let’s see if the others work out in a similar way.”
They worked busily and found, after only a matter of ten minutes more, that their supposition seemed to work. Each key bore the symbol of a constellation corresponding to a sign of the Zodiac, and each key sign corresponded to a slot identified with a constellation immediately preceding it in the Zodiac cycle.
“Quite a man, your Altair,” said Sofia.
“We’re not there yet,” Ezio replied. But, carefully, he put the first key into what he hoped was its corresponding slot-and it fit.
As did the other four.
And then-it was almost an anticlimax-slowly, smoothly, and soundlessly, the green door slid down into the stone floor.
Ezio stood in the entrance. A long hallway yawned before him, and, as he looked, two torches within, simultaneously and spontaneously, flared into life.
He took one from its sconce and stepped forward. Then he hesitated, and turned back to Sofia.
“You had better come back out of there alive,” she said.
Ezio gave her a mischievous smile and squeezed her hand tightly. “I plan to,” he said.
He made his way forward.
As he did so, the door to the vault slid closed again, so fast that Sofia hardly had time to react.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Ezio walked slowly down the hallway, which sloped ever downward and broadened out as he progressed. He scarcely had need of his torch since the walls were lined with them, and they flared alight, by some mysterious process, as he passed them. But he had no sense of unease, or trepidation. In a curious way, he felt as if he were coming home. As if something was nearing its completion.
At length, the hallway debouched into a vast, round chamber, 150 feet across and 150 feet high to the top of its dome, like the circular nave of some wondrous basilica. In the body of the room there were cases that must once have contained artifacts; but they were empty. The multiple galleries that ran round it were lined with bookshelf upon bookshelf-every inch of every wall was covered with them.
Ezio noticed, to his astonishment, that every single one of them was empty.
But he had no time to ponder the phenomenon, as his eye was drawn irresistibly to a huge oak desk on a high podium at the far end of the room, opposite the entrance. It was brightly lit from somewhere far above, and the light fell squarely on the tall figure seated at the desk.
And Ezio did feel something like awe, for in his heart he knew immediately who it was. He approached with reverence, and when he drew near enough to touch the cowled figure in the chair, he fell to his knees.
The figure was dead-he had been dead a long time. But the cloak, and white robes, were undamaged by the passage of centuries, and even in his stillness, the dead man radiated-something. Some kind of power-but no earthly power. Ezio, having made his obeisance, rose again. He did not dare lift the cowl to see the face, but he looked at the long bones of the skeletal hands stretched out on the surface of the desk, as if drawn to them. On the table, there was a pen, together with blank sheets of ancient parchment and a dried-up inkwell. Under the figure’s right hand lay a circular stone-not unlike the keys of the door, but more delicately wrought, and made, as Ezio thought, of the finest alabaster he had ever seen.
“No books,” said Ezio into the silence. “No artifacts… Just you, fratello mio.” He laid a hand delicately on the dead man’s shoulder. They were in no way related by blood, but the ties of the Brotherhood bound them more strongly than those of family ever could have.
“ Requiescat in Pace, O Altair.”
He looked down, thinking he had caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. But there was nothing. Except that the stone on the desk was free of the hand that Ezio must have imagined had covered it. A trick of the light. No more.
Ezio knew instinctively what he had to do. He struck a flint to light a candle stump in a stick on the desk to study the stone more closely. He put his own hand out and picked it up.
The moment he had it in his hand, the stone began to glow.
He raised it to his face as familiar clouds swirled, engulfing him …
SEVENTY-SIX
“You say Baghdad has been sacked?”
“Yes, Father. Khan Hulagu’s Mongols have driven through the city like a conflagration. No one has been spared. He set up a wagon wheel and made the population file past it. Anyone whose head came higher than the wheel’s hub, he killed.”
“Leaving only the young and malleable?”
“Indeed.”
“Hulagu is not a fool.”
“He has destroyed the city. Burned all its libraries. Smashed the university. Killed all its intellectuals. Along with the rest. The city has never seen such a holocaust.”
“And never will again, I pray.”
“Amen to that, Father.”
“I commend you, Darim. It is well you took the decision to sail to Alexandria. Have you seen to my books?”
“Yes, Father-those we did not send with the Polo brothers, I have already sent to Latakia on wagons for embarkation.”
Altair sat hunched by the open doorway of his great, domed library and archive. Empty now, swept clean. Clutched to him was a small wooden box. Darim had more sense than to ask his father what it was.
“Good. Very good,” said Altair.
“But there is one thing-one fundamental thing-that I do not understand,” said Darim. “Why did you build such a vast library and archive, over so many decades, if you did not intend to keep your books?”
Altair waved an interrupting hand. “Darim, you know very well that I have long outlived my time. I must soon leave on a journey that requires no baggage at all. But you have answered your own question. What Hulagu did in Baghdad, he will do here. We drove them off once, but they will return, and when they do, Masyaf must be empty.”
Darim noticed that his father hugged the small box even more tightly to his chest as he spoke, as if protecting it. He looked at Altair, so fragile as to seem made of parchment; but, inside, tough as vellum.
“I see,” he said. “This is no longer a library then-but a vault.”
His father nodded gravely.
“It must stay hidden, Darim. Far from eager hands. At least until it has passed on the secret it contains.”
“What secret?”
Altair smiled, and rose. “Never mind. Go, my son. Go and be with your family, and live well.”
Darim embraced him. “All that is good in me, began with you,” he said.
They drew apart. Then, Altair stepped through the doorway. Once within, he braced himself, straining to pull a large lever just inside, up by the lintel. At last it moved and, having completed its arc, clicked into place. Slowly, a heavy green stone door rose from the floor to close the opening.
Father and son watched each other wordlessly as the door came up. Darim tried hard to keep his self-control, but finally could not restrain his tears as the door enveloped his father in his living grave. At last he found himself looking at what was, to all intents and purposes, a blank surface, only the slight change of color distinguishing door from walls, that and the curious grooves cut into it.