Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 8

his hand stared at it, the back and the palm. He clenched and extended the
fingers, frowning. Then he raised his face again to the white glare of the
sun and slowly, tentative, reached his open hand up towards it.
"That's the sun, Falk," Parth said. "Sun—"
"Sun," he repeated, gazing at it, centered on it, the void and vacancy
of his being filled with the light of the sun and the sound of its name.
So his educ ation began.
Parth came up from the cellars and passing through the Old Kitchen
saw Falk hunched up in one of the window-bays, alone, watching the snow
fall outside the grimy glass. It was a tennight now since he had struck
Rossa and they had to lock him up till he calmed down. Ever since then he
had been dour and would not speak. It was strange to see his man's face
dulled and blunted by a child's sulky obstinate suffering. "Come on in by
the fire, Falk," Parth said, but did not stop to wait for him. In the great hall
by the fire she did wait a little, then gave him up and looked for something
to raise her own low spirits. There was nothing to do; the snow fell, all the
faces were too familiar, all the books told of things long ago and far away
that were no longer true. All around the silent House and its fields lay the
silent forest, endless, monotonous, indifferent; winter after winter, and she
would never leave this House, for where was there to go, what was there to
do? …
On one of the empty tables Ranya had left her teanb, a nat, keyed
instrument, said to be of Hainish origin. Parth picked out a tune in the
melancholic Stepped Mode of the Eastern Forest, then retuned the
instrument to its native scale and began anew. She had no skill with the
teanb and found the notes slowly, singing the words, spinning them out to
keep the melody going as she sought the next note.
Beyond the sound of wind in trees
beyond the storm-enshadowed seas,
on stairs of sunlit stone the fair
daughters of Airek stands…
She lost the tune, then found it again:
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