the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

‘The Assassin questions all fixed faith,’ I said, not without a touch of
pomposity. ‘Even his own.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, the Master wrote of the contradictions and ironies of the
Assassin. How they seek to bring about peace yet use violence and
murder as the means to do it. How they seek to open men’s minds yet
require obedience to a master. The Assassin teaches the dangers of
blindly believing in established faith but requires the Order’s followers
to follow the Creed unquestioningly.
‘He wrote also of the Ones Who Came Before, the members of the first
civilization, who left behind the artefacts hunted by both Templar and
Assassin.’
‘The Apple being one of them?’
‘Exactly. A thing of immense power. Competed for by the Knights
Templar. His experiences in Cyprus had shown him that the Templars,
rather than trying to wrest control by the usual means, had chosen
subterfuge for their strategy. Altaïr concluded that this, too, should be
the way of the Assassin.
‘No longer should the Order build great fortresses and conduct lavish
rituals. These, he decided, were not what makes the Assassin. What
makes the Assassin is his adherence to the Creed. That originally
espoused by Al Mualim, ironically enough. An ideology that challenged
established doctrines. One that encouraged acolytes to reach beyond
themselves and make the impossible possible. It was these principles that
Altaïr developed and took with him in the years he spent travelling the
Holy Land, stabilizing the Order and instilling in it the values he had
learned as an Assassin. Only in Constantinople did his attempts to