“Ay, sure, it is coming I am, white one; but tell me who you are, and whence you came, and whither we go.”
Then a voice that he knew sang:
O where the winds gather
The souls of the dead,
O Torcall, my father,
My soul is led!
But a river is here,
And a whirling Sword—
And a Woman washing
By a Ford!
Torcall Dall was as the last leaf on a tree at that.
“Were you on the boat?” he whispered hoarsely.
But it seemed to him that another voice answered: “Yea, even so.”
“Tell me, for I have blindness: Is it peace?”
“It is peace.”
“Are you man, or child, or of the Hidden People?”