Birdalone looked on it all, striving with her fear: but yet more
there was, for she deemed that needs must she go through the hall up
to the dais, lest the Sending Boat deny its obedience. Up toward the
dais she went then, passing by weaponed men who sat as if abiding the
council's end at the end-long tables. And now, though no shape of
man there spake or breathed, yet sound lacked not; for within the
hall went the wind as without, and beat about from wall to wall, and
drave clang and clash from the weapons hung up, and waved the arras,
and fared moaning in the nooks, and hummed in the vault above.
Came she up to the dais then, and stood beside one of the wise men,
and looked on the kings, and saw the mightiness which had been in
them, and quaked before them. Then she turned from them and looked
down to the floor, and lo! there, just below the dais, lay a woman on
a golden bier; exceeding fair had she been, with long yellow hair
streaming down from her head; but now waxen white she was, with ashen
lips and sunken cheeks. Clad was she in raiment of purple and pall,
but the bosom of her was bared on one side, and therein was the road
whereby the steel had fared which had been her bane.
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