Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 48

With that reply the charm vanished, blown away like a sweet sound or
fragrance in the wind from the east. Falk felt again a maimed bird struggle
in his hands crying out human words in its piercing unhuman voice: now
as then a chill went through him, and without hesitation, without decision,
he touched the silver arc and sent the slider forward at full speed.
No sound came to him from the boat, though now the wind blew from
them to him, and after a few moments, when hesitation had had time to
catch up with him, he slowed his craft and looked back. The boat was
gone. There was nothing on the broad dark surface of the water, clear back
to the distant bend.
After that Falk played no more loud games, but went on as swiftly and
silent as he might; he lit no fire at all that night, and his sleep was uneasy.
Yet something of the charm remained. The sweet voices had spoken of a
city, Elonaae in the ancient tongue, and drifting downriver alone in
mid-air and mid-wilderness Falk whispered the word aloud. Elonaae, the
Place of Man: myriads of men gathered together, not one house but
thousands of houses, great dwelling-places, towers, walls, windows, streets
and the open places where streets met, the trading-houses told of in books
where all the ingenuities of men's hands were made and sold, the palaces
of government where the mighty met to speak together of the great works
they did, the fields from which ships shot out across the years to alien
suns: had Earth ever borne so wonderful a thing as the Places of Man?
They were all gone now. There remained only Es Toch, the Place of
the Lie. There was no city in the Eastern Forest. No towers of stone and
steel and crystal crowded with souls rose up from among the swamps and
alder-groves, the rabbit-warrens and deer-trails, the lost roads, the broken,
buried stones.
Yet the vision of a city remained with Falk almost like the dim
memory of something he had once known. By that he judged the strength
of the lure, the illusion which he had blundered safely through, and he
wondered if there would be more such tricks and lures as he went on
always westward, towards their source.
The days and the river went on, flowing with him, until on one still
gray afternoon the world opened slowly out and out into an awesome
~ 46 ~