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.