Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 59

"It's all right," his companion muttered, and going down the
stairs—crawling backwards, as on a ladder, because she could not trust her
legs—she pushed the door open, and then looked up at Falk. "Come on!"
she said.
He came down, pulling the trapdoor to above him as she directed. It
was abruptly utterly dark, and crouching on the steps Falk hastily pressed
the stud of his handgun for light. Below him Estrel's white face glimmered.
He came down and followed her in the door, into a place that was very
dark and very big, so big his light could only hint at the ceiling and the
nearer walls. It was silent, and the air was dead, flowing past them in a
faint unchanging draft.
"There should be wood over here," Estrel's soft, strain-hoarsened
voice said somewhere to his left. "Here. We need a fire; help me with
this…"
Dry wood was stacked in high piles in a corner near the entrance.
While he got a blaze going, building it up inside a circle of blackened
stones nearer the center of the cavern, Estrel crept off into some farther
corner and returned dragging a couple of heavy blankets. They stripped
and rubbed down, then huddled on the blankets, inside their Basnasska
sleep-rolls, up close to the fire. It burned hot as if in a chimney, drawn up
by a high draft that also carried off the smoke. There was no warming the
great room or cave, but the firelight and heat relaxed and cheered them.
Estrel got dried meat out of her bag, and they munched as they sat, though
their lips were sore with frostbite and they were too tired to be hungry.
Gradually the warmth of the fire began to soak into their bones.
"Who else has used this place?"
"Anyone that knows of it, I suppose."
"There was a mighty House here once, if this was the cellar," Falk
said, looking into the shadows that flickered and thickened into
impenetrable black at a distance from the fire, and thinking of the great
basements under the house of Fear.
"They say there was a whole city here. It goes on a long way from the
door, they say. I don't know."
"How did you know of it—are you a Samsit woman?"
~ 57 ~