Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 60

"No."
He asked no further, recalling the code; but presently she said in her
submissive way, "I am a Wanderer. We know many places like this, hiding
places…I suppose you've heard of the Wanderers."
"A little," said Falk, stretching out and looking across the fire at his
companion. Tawny hair curled about her face as she sat huddled in the
shapeless bag, and a pale jade amulet at her throat caught the firelight.
"They know little of us in the Forest."
"No Wanderers came as far east as my House. What was told of them
there fits the Basnasska better—savages, hunters, nomads." He spoke
sleepily, laying his head down on his arm.
"Some Wanderers might be called savages. Others not. The
Cattle-Hunters are all savages and know nothing beyond their own
territories, these Basnasska and Samsit and Arksa. We go far. We go east
to the Forest, and south to the mouth of the Inland River, and west over the
Great Mountains and the Western Mountains even to the sea. I myself
have seen the sun set in the sea, behind the chain of blue isles that lies far
off the coast, beyond the drowned valleys of California,
earthquake-whelmed…" Her soft voice had slipped into the cadence of
some archaic chant or plaint. "Go on," Falk murmured, but she was still,
and before long he was fast asleep. For a while she watched his sleeping
face. At last she pushed the embers together, whispered a few words as if
in prayer to the amulet chained around her neck, and curled down to sleep
across the fire from him.
When he woke she was making a stand of bricks over the fire to
support a kettle filled with snow. "It looks like late afternoon outside," she
said, "but it could be morning, or noon for that matter. The storm's as thick
as ever. They can't track us. And if they did, still they couldn't get in this
place…This kettle was in the cache with the blankets. And there's a bag of
dried peas. We'll do well enough here." The hard, delicate face turned to
h im with a faint smile. "It's dark, though. I don't like the thick walls and
the dark."
"It's better than bandaged eyes. Though you saved my life with that
bandage. Blind Horressins was better off than dead Falk." He hesitated and
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