Assassin

A story about a little boy named Ali, who in early childhood ended up in a high-mountain fortress and became one of the hired killers—the assassins. “Ali was orphaned very early. They told him that his family had been killed during a military raid under the ruins of a burning house, but he himself didn’t remember either the house or the raid. He didn’t know where he came from or what his parents were called. Father and mother were replaced for him by a person whom he had been used to calling ‘Uncle Alaouddin’ since infancy.

Alaouddin brought Ali to the Alamut fortress and placed him under the supervision of his servants, who obeyed their master without question and treated him like a shadow of the Most High on Earth (that’s what they called him). Alaouddin was kind to little Ali, and the boy feared him and at the same time adored him to madness. ‘If Uncle Alaouddin is the shadow of the Most High,’ he thought, ‘then when I grow up, I’ll become a shadow of this shadow. And that’s all I’ll need…’”