The Age of Ra

33. Revelation

Steven led David to the old storehouse that was now the Lightbringer's war room. They could be alone there. He covered the side of his face with a hand the whole way, in case anyone saw.

In the storehouse, he slumped into a folding chair. David remained standing. There was silence for a while, broken only by the sporadic percussion beats of the battle going on outside. Steven sat with his head bowed, his back bent. Finally he straightened up and, seizing the top of the mask with one hand, pulled it off in a single, decisive movement.

His hair was shaggy and unkempt but otherwise much as David remembered, except for the few strands of grey that now salted its sandy-brownness. His face, so much like David's own, showed few signs of the years that had passed other than a slight pouching around the eyes and the first shallow etchings of wrinkles across the forehead. There was the Westwynter nose, sharp and plain as ever, almost too pointed for its own good, as though it were more a tool for hacking with than an organ for smelling with. And there were Steven's long-lashed eyelids, which brought a touch of their mother's femininity to the masculine family features.

David found himself shocked — moved, even — to see his brother once again, after all this time of not quite seeing him, of knowing he was there beneath the mask but not having the knowledge confirmed beyond all doubt by the evidence of his own eyes. It was the difference between looking at a pencil study for a famous painting and the painting itself, with all the colour fleshed out and the depth shaded in.

A painting that had been vandalised.

''Desfigurado,'' Steven said. ''See? Like I told you.''

David was transfixed by the scarring. Couldn't tear his eyes from it.

''And you can also see the reason for the mask,'' Steven went on. ''The real reason. One look at this'' — he circled a finger at his cheek — ''and the Lightbringer's reputation, his whole ethos, wouldn't mean a thing.''

''You said people did see it,'' David said. ''You told me you had the mask yanked from your head at gunpoint, several times, when you were going around Freegypt recruiting for your cause.''

''I lied about that. I–I may have lied about quite a lot of things.''

''No shit.''

''But I'm prepared to be honest with you now, Dave. Tell you everything, straight. And you know you'll have to believe me, because there's nothing to be gained from lying to you any more.''

''Isn't there?'' said David.

''Oh, just bloody give it a rest, won't you?'' Steven snapped. ''We don't have much time, and anyway events are going to bear out everything I'm about to say. Listen to me. Let me get through this quickly without you interrupting. This is the truth. What really happened to me after the Battle of the Aegean…''

What really happened to me after the Battle of the Aegean was much like I said, to begin with at least. I did get thrown clear when the Immortal blew up. I did float for a night in the sea. I did gaze up at the stars and have my moment of epiphany. I did wash up the next morning on the shore of a tiny, uninhabited island smack dab in the middle of bloody nowhere.

There, though, is where the version I gave you deviates from the way things actually went.

I described that island as a Robinson Crusoe kind of place, didn't I? Tame rabbits hopping about, olive trees, a freshwater spring, a cave — the basic necessities for living, all present and correct and strangely convenient.

Fucking crap.

It was a rock. A bare hunk of rock sticking up out of the ocean. Not a scrap of shelter to be found. Not a hint of vegetation. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink and nowhere to hide from the elements. I made it sound like it wasn't such a bad spot to have wound up in — you know, could've been a lot worse.

Well, it was worse. It was a fucking sight worse.

After three days I was half-crazed with thirst and hunger and thinking about throwing myself into the sea. The sound of the waves beating against the island was like a mallet to my skull. The sun scorched down and I could feel myself cooking in its heat; could smell my own skin burning. At the middle of each day, when the sun was at its height, all I could do was lie in a ball with my navy tunic over my head and wait for evening.

On the fourth day, or it might have been the fifth, I managed to catch a crab that had scuttled up onto the island. I tore it apart and sucked out its insides like it was an oyster. It was the foulest thing I have ever tasted but I could've eaten a hundred more if I'd had the opportunity.

That kept me going for another day or so. Not so much the nutrition I got from the crab, more the possibility that more might come my way and I'd have a regular source of food. But the crab was a one-off. No other crustacean was stupid enough to come up onto that barren no-place. Only one living creature had the sheer dumb bad luck to be there: me.

By the end of the week I was in very bad shape indeed. I could barely move. My brain felt like a dried walnut. Parts of my skin were so badly sunburned, they looked as if they'd been flayed. I was delirious, imagining things. At one point Mum and Dad came to visit. Boy, were they disappointed in me. ''And what sort of a farrago is this?'' Dad demanded. ''You're a disgrace, Steven, a disgrace!'' Like I'd had a choice about getting shipwrecked on that island. Like it was nothing but some sort of poor career move. And Mum not much help, twittering on about how I'd upset my father and why didn't I ever think about anybody but myself? I'd have cried, except my body couldn't spare the moisture for tears.

The sea was looking even more tempting by then. If I'd had the strength to crawl down the rocks and slither in, I would have. It'd have been quick, and far better than slowly roasting to death out in the open. Just float along till I sank.

I held on for a couple more days. By which I mean I remained alive not through any great effort of will, but just by happening not to die. Humans. We can be killed in an instant. Ba bolt, bullet, car crash, falling off a cliff — bang, we're gone, just like that. But, given the option, life doesn't depart that easily, does it? It hangs on. It fights to the last, even when the fight isn't worth winning any more. Like Gran. How long did she have cancer for? Six months? For six whole months she just kept on going while the cancer ate her up from the inside. She was a shell by the end, a hollow thing that only looked like our grandmother. There was nothing beneath the skin. It looked like you could touch her and she'd disintegrate. But dammit, she was still alive. She could still talk, now and then. Still tick me off for slouching or tell you you were her favourite grandson, which you were, Dave, don't deny it. Frail in her bed, like she was made out of paper, but still refusing to go. Stubborn old cow.

And that stubbornness was in me, too, whether I liked it or not. I needed to die. I wanted to die. But life wouldn't let me.

And then he came.

He came in a dream, and at first I thought he was as much a hallucination as Mum and Dad had been. Why not? If I'd imagined them, why not him?

But there are dreams about gods and then there are god dreams. It's not only priests who get the latter. Ordinary people do, every so often, and you can tell the difference. One sort of dream, the gods just drift in, don't do much of anything, or maybe they look like someone you know and someone you know looks like them, and quite a lot of the time they resemble famous sportsmen and film stars, did you know that? True fact. It's funny.

But a god dream, a proper divine visitation — that's a whole different kettle of fish. There's nothing random or casual about it. You feel it deep down. It touches some part of you way below the normal level of consciousness. And your life changes.

So I soon figured out I was really in the presence of a god, and then he asked me how much I wanted to live. Not whether I wanted to live, note. How much. And of course my answer was: a lot. I mean, I'd been wishing I could die, but that was to escape the hellish hopelessness of my situation. Offered the chance, I'd have much preferred not to.

''What would you do, to live?'' was his next question. ''What would you be prepared to give in exchange?''

I thought about it, but really it was a no-brainer.

''Anything,'' I told him.

''Are you sure?'' he said.

I said I was.

''We'll see,'' he said, and then was gone.

The next day, clouds gathered and it rained. For the first time since I'd pitched up on that wretched island, the sun wasn't broiling me. Soft rain was coming down from the sky. It washed me and cooled me and bathed me, and it gathered in dimples in the rocks, giving me thimblefuls of fresh water to slurp up. I went down on all fours and lapped away like a dog.

The god came again when I next slept. I was pathetically grateful. ''You brought me that rain,'' I said, almost slobbering in my delight.

''It happened to rain,'' he replied with a shrug. ''Are you still ready to live?''

''I am,'' I said. ''I'll do whatever it takes. Even though you aren't my national deity, I will serve you.''

''You say that. You'll need to prove it.''

And off he went again.

And the following morning, would you believe it, a wave came along and threw a big old shoal of sardines up onto the rocks, and most of them flopped and flipped themselves back into the sea, but a couple of dozen were left stranded there, high and dry, gasping their last, and I gathered them up and ate one raw and laid the rest out to cook in the sun, because those rocks could get as hot as a griddle, and bingo, within an hour or so I was snacking down on baked sardine flesh and it was sweet and juicy and my mouth's watering even now at the memory of it.

Third dream. He was back.

''Give me a few years of your life,'' he said, ''and in return I will give you power. Power over men. I will make you as close to a deity as any mortal may get. But the condition is that you must work for me. You must act according to my wishes. Your time will not be your own. Your every waking hour will be spent pursuing my goals. Do this, and when you have finished you will be free. Free to pursue your life as before.''

As bargains go, it didn't seem a bad one. Not that I was in any position to haggle. It was clearly a take-it-or-leave-it arrangement, and since leaving it meant dying a slow horrible death and taking it meant survival, what else was I going to do? Already he'd proved himself with the rainfall and the sardines. He'd shown me he meant what he said. He was serious.

''It will not be pleasant,'' he added. ''I will be bestowing a minuscule portion of my essence on you, and make no mistake, it will hurt. The mortal frame was not designed to be a receptacle for such power. In order to fit you for it, you will first need to be broken in… toughened.''

''I can handle it,'' I told him. ''When do we start?''

''Now,'' he said, and…

He thrust into me. That's the only word I can think of. Thrust his ba into me. There's no other way of putting it. It wasn't gentle. It wasn't subtle. It was like… I was crouching there on those rocks and there was this enormous, penetrating, agonising influx of… of force. Sudden, and overwhelming. My mind went blank, as though every fuse in my body had blown. I remember waking up, screaming. Clawing at the rocks. Blood trickling from my mouth because I'd bitten my tongue and from my nose because I don't know why. Everything hurt. I was tingling all over, and not in a nice way. Like pins and needles times a hundred. All I could do was lie there sobbing. The pain faded after about an hour, but the sense of intrusion — violation — didn't. I felt… different. Changed. Strange inside. I couldn't put my finger on how, precisely. I just knew I was no longer who I had been.

It happened again, next time I slept. And again. And again. I came to dread closing my eyes, knowing what was to come. But I knew I had to endure it. This was all part of the deal. The receiving of power. The breaking-in. The toughening. And it didn't get any easier with repetition. Each time, in fact, it was worse. More painful. More humiliating. Each time, I was left feeling raw and used and a little less the person I used to be. Degraded. As though the old Steven, happy-go-lucky Steven, irreverent and impulsive Steven, was getting seared away layer by layer, to allow this new thing into me, the Steven I was to become.

Rain showers provided me with drinking water, just enough of it when I needed it. I soon had the strength and the mental wherewithal to lie on the rocks by the sea and catch fish with my bare hands. It's not an easy skill to master, since the angle of refraction through the water makes things look like they're somewhere when actually they're just to the side of that, but I found that if I dipped my hands under the surface and held them there long enough, the fish stopped being suspicious and swam close enough to grab. I even managed to haul out a lobster once.

Five and a half weeks I lived like that. Forty days and nights. I kept track of the time like prisoners do, scratching marks on a rock in batches of five. By the end, my uniform was in tatters, just rags hanging off me. I had a hermit's hair and beard. I was skeletal, and tottery on my pins, and stank like a cesspit.

But I had power. It thrummed inside me, the god's gift. Gift? No, I earned it. It wasn't handed to me. I paid for it, every bit of it, with suffering.

On the last night, the fortieth night, the god told me he was done with me. He had infused me with as much of his essence as I'd need.

''With this power,'' he said, ''you will be able to bend people to your will. They will cede authority over themselves to you, and do it voluntarily, bowing to you in the same instinctive way that they do to the gods. You will not be able to make anyone do anything that goes against the grain of their own wishes. By speaking to them in the right way, however, with coaxing words and wily flattery, you will be able to mould their wishes to match yours.''

What I had now, in other words, was the silverest of silver tongues.

''You will also,'' the god went on, ''be invisible to the rest of the Pantheon. You will be able to carry out your work in secret, without fear of their intervention.''

In other words, he'd made me the human equivalent of a ba-infused amulet. Instead of priests, I was a blur to the gods.

''But,'' he said, ''you must use these abilities only to further my ends, and in order to ensure you keep to that, I am going to mark you. Mark you in such a way that there is never any doubt who is your master. Hide the mark from others by all means, but you will always know it is there and you will not be able to avoid it. Every time you look at your own reflection, the mark will look back at you. Others may not recognise it for what it is. Some may take it for just an unfortunate scar. But you will know, and I will know, and it will signify the compact we have sealed.''

Like I said last time, I had been hit in the face by shrapnel from the exploding Immortal. I had had my face damaged. But the god took that damage and transformed it. The scarring twisted and reshaped itself into what you see before you now. I felt it happen, and it hurt too, surprise, surprise.

Dawn the next day, a fishing boat was pulling up to anchor beside the island. I staggered down to it. A Greek fisherman was urinating over the guardrail. Iannis.

I told him to take me off the island. It was the very first time I exercised my power. I spoke commandingly, as a god would. Iannis agreed instantly that I could hitch a ride on his boat. We set off, and I never once looked back. I kept my face turned away from the island till I knew it was safely out of sight. That fucking place… I still have nightmares about it, you know. Every now and again I dream I'm stuck there and will never get off and everything that's happened since, that's the dream. In reality, I'm dying there on those rocks, fantasising the next few years of my life. All this, the chair I'm sitting on, the room we're in, you, Dave — it doesn't exist. Bizarre, eh?

From then on, the story goes much as I told you. I stayed with Iannis and did the drug-running thing with him and all that, in order to give myself time to recover from my ordeal and plot and think and scheme. I knew what the god wanted from me. I just had to figure out how to bring it about in the most effective fashion.

Freegypt was the obvious place to set up shop. There, apathy towards the Pantheon was a way of life, and apathy can be turned into antipathy without much effort, like sharpening a blunt pencil. Plus, with all the militias and infighting in Upper Freegypt, they had the ready-made raw material for an army. I formulated a plan. Learn Arabic. Then create an image for myself. The mask was obligatory, to disguise the god's mark. I'd tried growing a beard but it didn't really work. Didn't obscure enough of the scarring. Also, if I wore a mask that covered my face completely it would make me a blank canvas, something people could project their own dreams and ideals onto. I'd be both less of a man with it, and more. And the name? That just popped into my head one morning. Al Ashraqa. He who brightens. The Lightbringer. Why not? It summed up what I was pretending to do, bring illumination to a benighted world. Kind of arrogant, I appreciate, but then I saw the Lightbringer as quite an arrogant character. People like arrogance in a leader, anyway. They're drawn to it. They want a leader to have certainty and guts and ambition.

And the Lightbringer had those — has those — in abundance.

''Pretending,'' said David. ''Pretending to bring illumination to the world.''

''Yes.''

''You're a fraud. This whole 'crusade' of yours — nothing but a sham.''

''Harsh words. Not how I'd put it.''

''How would you put it?''

''This is just a job, Dave,'' said Steven. ''Something I have to do. I'm discharging an obligation. I made a deal, and this is my side of it.''

''A deal with a god.''

''Yes.''

''Who you can't even bring yourself to name.''

Steven looked away. ''You can't understand what it was like. He treated me like… like…''

''A slave?''

''No, worse than that. A dog.''

''Or how about like his property?'' David offered, recalling the image that had sprung to mind when he'd caught that glimpse of the edge of the scar back at the Temple of Hatshepsut — a cattle brand.

''Ha,'' said Steven, an empty laugh. ''Yeah, that'll do.''

''You should say his name, though. If he's your owner, you should be prepared to admit to it.''

''Why? It's obvious who he is, isn't it?''

''Still. For my sake. Say it out loud. Say who you submitted to.''

Steven said the name, softly, not even quite a whisper.

''Again,'' David said. ''Properly.''

''What for? Look. Look at this.'' Steven gesticulated at the scar. ''What does it look like?''

It looked like the head of some kind of animal, a creature with no direct analogue among the fauna of earth. It had a long, pointed snout, pricked ears, and horns like an antelope's. The name it had been given was the Typhonic Beast, after a malevolent fire-god of the Ancient Greeks.

''I know what it is,'' said David. ''Whose emblem is it? Come on. Loud and clear. Say his name.''

Steven sighed, then loudly, clearly, uttered the word.

''Set.''