the-secret-crusade-oliver-bowden

was in there somewhere. It had needed to be located and coaxed out. It
had needed an agent for its release – and Altaïr had managed to harness
its power once before.
Then he had been consumed with grief for Al Mualim. Now he was
consumed with grief for his family. Perhaps the Apple first had to take in
order to give.
Whatever the answer, his studies had begun and journal after journal
was filled with his writings: page after page of philosophies, ideologies,
designs, drawings, schematics, memories. Untold candles burned down
as he scratched away feverishly, stopping only to piss. For days on end
he would write, then for days on end he would leave his desk, riding out
from Alamut alone, on Apple errands, collecting ingredients, gathering
supplies. Once, even, the Apple had directed him to a series of artefacts
that he retrieved and hid, telling no one of their nature or their
whereabouts.
He had not stopped mourning, of course. He still blamed himself for
Maria’s death, but he had learned from it. He felt now a purer kind of
grief: a yearning for Maria and Sef, an ache that never seemed to leave
him, that one day was as sharp and keen as a blade slicing a thousand
cuts on his heart, and the next was a nauseous hollow sensation, as if a
sick bird were trying to unfurl its wings in his stomach.
Sometimes he smiled, though, because he thought Maria would have
approved of him mourning her. It would have appealed to the part of
her that had stayed a spoilt English noblewoman, who had been as adept
at fixing a man with a haughty stare as she was of defeating him in
combat, her withering put-downs as cutting as her blade. And, of course,
she would have approved that he had finally managed to take hold of