"Fire for the Kedaki. Cultural fire. Idol-breaking, iconoclastic...."
"But you don't remember what?"
"No."
"And the way you speak of us, The Kedaki. As if you, as if you're—alien."
Matlin said nothing. His head ached with the half-thoughts, the dream-thoughts. The wind had died down and he breathed deeply of the clear hot morning air. When he looked up and saw the ruins of Balata 'kai silhouetted against the brightening sky, he could see nothing of the guard.
"Come," he said, and stood up, helping Haazahri to her feet. She leaned against him for a moment, the maiden suppleness of her ripe against his thews and chest. He held her and she breathed against his ear, touching the lobe of it with her lips. "I love you, Matlin," she said. "Whoever you are, whatever you are. You know that, don't you?"
"Haazahri," he said, pushing her away gently. "You may only hurt yourself. I don't know. I don't know! I can't say anything, can't think anything of that, until I know. My name is not Matlin. I don't even know my name."
A faint, wistful smile played about her lips as she said, "All right, lead on to what's left of that staircase of yours."
They took half a dozen strides toward the base of the limestone crag. Limestone. On the desert, with little water to erode it, how long would limestone endure? A dozen eternities, thought Matlin, and more. Balata 'kai—forever....
Suddenly, he was running. Something had moved in the shadow at the foot of the cliff. Since it hadn't called out, whatever it was, he hoped that it would not. He ran silently, swiftly.