Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 11

"No," the girl said. "None of us in the House have ever seen high
mountains. I think there are none this side of the Inland River. It must be
far from here, very far." She spoke like one on whom a chill had fallen.
Through the edge of dreams a sa wtooth sound cut, a faint jagged
droning, eerie. Falk roused and sat up beside Parth; both gazed with
strained, sleepy eyes northward where the remote sound throbbed and
faded and first light paled the sky above the darkness of the trees. "An
aircar," Parth whispered. "I heard one once before, long ago…" She
shivered. Falk put his arm around her shoulders, gripped by the same
unease, the sense of a remote, uncomprehended, evil presence passing off
there in the north through the edge of daylight.
The sound died away; in the vast silence of the Forest a few birds
piped up for the sparse dawn-chorus of autumn. Light in the east
brightened. Falk and Parth lay back down in the warmth and the infinite
comfort of each other's arms; only half wakened, Falk slipped back into
sleep. When she kissed him and slipped away to go about the day's work
he murmured, "Don't go yet…little hawk, little one…" But she laughed
and slipped away, and he drowsed on a while, unable as yet to come up out
of the sweet lazy depths of pleasure and of peace.
The sun shone bright and level in his eyes. He turned over, then sat up
yawning and stared into the deep, red-leaved branches of the oak that
towered up beside the sleeping-porch. He became aware that in leaving
Parth had turned on the sleepteacher beside his pillow; it was muttering
softly away, reviewing Cetian number theory. That made him laugh, and
the cold of the bright November morning woke him fully. He pulled on his
shirt and breeches—heavy, soft, dark cloth of Parth's weaving, cut and
fitted for him by Buckeye—and stood at the wooden rail of the porch
looking across the Clearing to the brown and red and gold of the endless
trees.
Fresh, still, sweet, the morning was as it had been when the first
people on this land had waked in their frail, pointed houses and stepped
outside to see the sun rise free of the dark forest. Mornings are all one, and
autumn always autumn, but the years men count are many. There had been
a first race on this land…and a second, the conquerors; both were lost,
~9~