Chapter 99 — Old Friends
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 7 of 7
Behind him, the others watched that figure make its way along the ancient road toward the Dead Marsh. Then suddenly they heard him sing aloud: "The road to the end of the world has always been long. A child's heart has always been foolish. Sky high and sea broad, eighty thousand leagues, and all the teeming multitudes lie prostrate. Stars by the thousand, the moon at its bright, the blue heaven cold, cold as frost. Laughable, that all things are but straw dogs—who makes the rain fall, who turns the clouds?..."
The song was rough and ancient. It was not sweet or pleasing to the ear, yet within its bleakness there was a grandeur of its own.
The others saw only this: beneath the vast sky, upon the ancient road, with white clouds drifting and the wild waste lying still, that man walked on with his hands behind his back, indescribably proud and untamed.
The song grew fainter. The man had already gone far away.