Did he? He didn't know what he wished. He'd come here on an impulse. Idol-breaker? But why? And what idols?
"Look," he said, pointing at the limestone crag. There was something at once ineffably serene and tumultuously exciting about the five thousand year old slabs and columns perched there. There were stories they could tell, stories of generations long turned to dust, stories of the past and how, from the past, the present came, child of history, buffetted by forces it only half-understood, the helpless, passionate, living present, the moment for which, whether we admit it or not, we all live, ephemeral, hardly palpable, thrilling and then gone, dead, history, the navel for tomorrow which is today....
"It is beautiful," Haazahri said slowly.
A wind stirred, swirling little puffs of sand at their feet, their clothing, even their faces. The sun was very hot already and would be much hotter soon. Dazzling white Deneb, far brighter than Sol....
Sol!
But Sol was the day star of the planet Earth, remote on the other edge of this small filamental arm of the galaxy. So, why Sol? Look at your skin, Matlin. Matlin, the Reborn! Proud, insolent name! But look at your skin. Gaze on it. You're Kedaki. Of course you're Kedaki. What else could you be?
"Have you ever been here before?" Haazahri asked.
"Yes, I think so."
"Probably it's why you wanted to come."
"I've been here. I know I have, Haazahri. Many times. Straight ahead, there, see where I'm pointing? There used to be a staircase there, carved in the living rock. For tourists to climb to the top, to see the ruins. See the jumble of rocks now? We'll have to climb, but it won't be like climbing stairs. We'll—"