Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 52

Forest was inhabited only by giant white snakes. They practiced a
monotheistic religion whose rituals involved mutilation, castration and
human sacrifice.
It was one of the outgrowth-superstitions of their complex creed that
had induced them to take Falk alive and make him a member of the tribe.
Normally, since he carried a laser and thus was above slave-status, they
would have cut out his stomach and liver to examine for auguries, and then
let the women hack him up as they pleased. However, a week or two
before his capture an old man of the Mzurra Society had died. There being
no as-yet-unnamed infant in the tribe to receive his name, it was given to
the captive, who, blinded, disfigured, and only conscious at intervals, still
was better than nobody; for so long as Old Horressins kept his name his
ghost, evil like all ghosts, would return to trouble the ease of the living. So
the name was taken from the ghost and given to Falk, along with the full
initiations of a Hunter, a ceremony which included whippings, emetics,
dances, the recital of dreams, tattooing, antiphonal free-association,
feasting, sexual abuse of one woman by all the males in turn, and finally
nightlong incantations to The God to preserve the new Horressins from
harm. After this they left him on a horsehide rug in a cowhide tent,
delirious and unattended, to die or recover, while the ghost of Old
Horressins, nameless and powerless, went whining away on the wind
across the plains.
The woman, who, when he had first recovered consciousness, had
been busy bandaging his eyes and looking after his wounds, also came
whenever she could to care for him. He had only seen her when for brief
moments in the semi-privacy of his tent he could lift the bandage which
her quick wits had provided him when he was first brought in. Had the
Basnasska seen those eyes of his open, they would have cut out his tongue
so he could not name his own name, and then burned him alive. She had
told him this, and other matters he needed to know about the Nation of the
Basnasska; but not much about herself. Apparently she had not been with
the tribe very much longer than himself; he gathered that she had been lost
on the prairie, and had joined the tribe rather than starve to death. They
were willing to accept another she-slave for the use of the men, and she
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