Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 30

was speak the truth. "I don't know what I am or where I came from. I'm
going to try to find out."
"Going where?"
He looked from Argerd to the other one, Drehnem. He knew they
knew the answer, and that Drehnam would strike again if he said it.
"Answer!" the bearded one muttered, half rising and leaning forward.
"To Es Toch," Falk said, and again Drehnem struck him across the
face, and again he took the blow with the silent humiliation of a child
punished by strangers.
"This is no good; he's not going to say anything different from what
we got from him under penton. Let him up."
Then what?" said Drehnem.
"He came for a night's shelter; he can have it Get up!"
The strap that held him into the chair was loosened. He got shakily
onto his feet. When he saw the low door and the black down-pitch of stairs
they forced him towards, he tried to resist and break free, but his muscles
would not yet obey him. Drehnem arm-twisted him down into a crouch
and pushed him through the doorway. The door slammed shut as he turned
staggering to keep his footing on the stairs.
It was dark, black dark. The door was as if sealed shut, no handle on
this side, no mote or hint of light coming under it, no sound. Falk sat down
on the top step and put his head down on his arms.
Gradually the weakness of his body and the confusion in his mind
wore off. He raised his head, straining to see. His night-vision was
extraordinarily acute, a function, Ranna had long ago pointed out, of his
large-pupiled, large-irised eyes. But only flecks and blurs of after-images
tormented his eyes; he could see nothing, for there was no light. He stood
up and step by step felt his slow way down the narrow, unseen descent.
Twenty-one steps, two, three—level. Dirt. Falk went slowly forward,
one hand extended, listening.
Though the darkness was a kind of physical pressure, a constraint,
deluding him constantly with the notion that if he only looked hard enough
he would see, he had no fear of it in itself. Methodically, by pace and
touch and hearing, he mapped out a part of the vast cellar he was in, the
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