Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 79

she had been anxious and joyless, and the sojourn here which pleased Falk
so was a trial to her. It was time they left. "I shall go speak to the Prince of
our going," he told her gently, and leaving her there under the willows,
now beaded yellowgreen with leaf-buds, he walked up through the gardens
to the great house. Five of the long-legged, heavy-shouldered black dogs
trotted along with him, an honor guard he would miss when he left this
place.
The Prince of Kansas was in his throne-room, reading. The disk that
covered the east wall of the room by day shone cool mottled silver, a
domestic moon; only at night did it glow with soft solar warmth and light.
The throne, of polished petrified wood from the southern deserts, stood in
front of it. Only on the first night had Falk seen the Prince seated on the
throne. He sat now in one of the chairs near the patterning-frame, and at
his back the twenty-foot-high windows looking to the west were
uncurtained. There the far, dark mountains stood, tipped with ice.
The Prince raised his swordblade face and heard what Falk had to say.
Instead of answering he touched the book he had been reading, not one of
the beautiful decorated projector-scrolls of his extraordinary library but a
little handwritten book of bound paper. "Do you know this Canon?"
Falk looked where he pointed and saw the verse,
What men fear
must be feared.
O desolation!
It has not yet not yet
reached its limit!
"I know it, Prince. I set out on this journey of mine with it in my pack.
But I cannot read the page to the left, in your copy."
"Those are the symbols it was first written in, five or six thousand
years ago: the tongue of the Yellow Emperor—my ancestor. You lost
yours along the way? Take this one, then. But you'll lose it too, I expect; in
following the Way the way is lost. O desolation! Why do you always
speak the truth, Opalstone?"
~ 77 ~