The Assassins of Altis Read Online Free Page B

up the way it is, we won't know how to fix things. We have to go to Altis and find that tower, even if it is in ruins now, and learn what we can from any surviving records. People expect me to change the world, to make it better, but I can't fix something that big unless I know how it came to be broken."
    "Then we must go to Altis." Alain could feel against his back the edges of the water-tight package in his own pack which held his share of the manuscripts. Mari had shown him some of the Mechanic documents, but he had understood none of them. He did know that Mari was convinced that these texts could change the world, and that was enough for Alain.
    “You’re very quiet,” Mari whispered to him. The snow had kept falling, and was now coating them as well the ruins. “Talk to me. It’s cold and I’m scared. What are you thinking about?”
    “I was thinking that none of my fellow Mages would be able to understand what I am doing,” Alain admitted. “They, like me, were taught that the world we see is an illusion and that all people are but shadows on that illusion. We were told that the works of Mechanics were all tricks. They are obedient to the Mage Guild because that is drilled into us as young children. Yet here I am, having thrown off the discipline of my Guild, which seeks my death. I have decided that at least one other person is a thing of a great value, having fallen in love with that person despite my training to reject all feelings, and she moreover a Mechanic, member of a Guild which is the ancestral enemy of the Mage Guild. Other Mages would think me mad.”
    In the gathering gloom, Alain sensed more than saw the smile on Mari’s face. “Maybe not every Mage. That old girlfriend of yours was trying to understand.”
    “Mage Asha was never my girlfriend. Why do you keep calling her that?”
    “Because I don’t believe you, my Mage,” Mari said. “But that’s okay. Asha felt like a good person trapped in a Mage’s teachings, just like you were before I met you and, uh, ‘ensnared’ you. She tried to help us back at Severun. I hope she’s all right.”
    “Yes,” Alain agreed. “It would be…nice to have more friends, after so long being alone.”
    Mari’s voice took on that slight edge it still sometimes did when talking about Asha. “Just as long as she doesn’t try to get too friendly with you.” She looked out over the dead city. “Alain, if we fail, if we can’t break the grip that your guild and my guild have on Dematr, the whole world could end up looking like this.”
    “It will end up looking like this,” Alain said. “Within a few years at most. Uncontrolled wars, breakdown of the governments of the common folk, mobs, rioting, the same anarchy that has riven what once was the country of Tiae in the south. The efforts of our former Guilds to control the bedlam will only magnify the chaos, until the Guilds are swept away along with all else.”
    “Unless…” Mari drew in a deep breath. “Unless the daughter of Jules stops it by overthrowing the Great Guilds first. Alain, why is it me? Jules died centuries ago. Who knows how many women descended from her have lived since then? And I don’t even believe that she’s actually my ancestor. Why me? Why now?”
    “I do not know for certain,” Alain said. “I would say that it must be now, because no more time remains. And I would say it must be you, because there is no one else who could do it.”
    “Neither of those conclusions is particularly comforting,” Mari grumbled.
    They sat quietly then for a while, listening for trouble, watching for danger, as the darkness grew heavier along with the snowfall. The wind had calmed, and aside from the gentle hiss of the falling snow nothing moved or made a noise. But Alain distrusted that sense of peace, wondering what moved silently beyond their very short range of vision.
    Some pieces of rubble rattled not too far away, a tiny avalanche of debris that brought both Mari and Alain