Rebels and Tyrants by Magaret Weis Tracy Hickman

Author:Magaret Weis, Tracy Hickman [Rebels and Tyrants]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Lost Causes

Nancy Varian Berberick

Well, I never saw a homelier girl than that rawboned creature sitting on the edge of the deeply cushioned sofa in Usha Majere's reception room. Her big hands she folded carefully on her lap, you could imagine she'd arranged each finger, one by one, to hide the knobby knuckles. Her hair hung poker-straight and it was the color of mud puddles. She had a long horsey face; unfortunately, with teeth to match. I don't say these things to be cruel, but the drabness of the girl was actually startling, surprising because everything, everyone, around her was so lovely.

She is an artist, Lady Usha, a woman whose portraits are much sought-after. The least of them is valued for its execution, the fairest and the rarest—well, those you tell stories about. She surrounds herself with paintings and sculptures and weavings from all around Krynn. Artists are like that, hungry for beauty, for color and shape and texture. Lady Usha, whose husband is the premier mage of Krynn, does not suffer for lack of what she loves. These collections, however, were but backdrop for the jewel that is the lady herself. If songs ever lied about the charms of Usha Majere, they lied only in that they did not praise her beauty highly enough. Ah, it was a lovely place, the lady's chamber, and were her artifacts and the lady herself not enough resplendence for one parlor, two elves kept watch just inside the doorway, one facing outward to the corridor, one inward. They had the same beauty it seems all their kind receive as a birthright, elegantly canted ears, shining golden hair, lithe limbs and long eyes as clear as starlight. Among all this splendor sat the drab girl.

"There you are," said Lady Usha, holding out her hand to me. "Come in, Madoc. Here are people I want you to meet."

Tarya was the elfwoman's name, Raethe her companion's. Raethe didn't so much as nod to me when introductions were made. Tarya looked at me with winter eyes. "Madoc ap Westhos," she said. "Yes, I know your father."

Thus, the winter eyes. For if she knew my kin who live out in Sancrist, no doubt she'd heard one or another of them go on at length about the dismal matter of Madoc, our father's lastborn son who turned aside a knighthood for magehood, then failed to use his sorcer-ous skills to benefit the knights. Well, that's what they'd tell you, those brothers and sisters of mine. I'll tell you this: He was an old man, my father, and like so many of his generation, dedicated to lost causes and lost gods. He remembered the time before the Chaos War, before the vanishing of gods and the coming of the dragons who portioned out most of Krynn among themselves. He believed that Solamnia, the old borders shrunken by a dragon's will, could be restored to its former glory, that Qualinesti and Nordmaar and the lands round Thorbardin be restored to freedom, ay, that all of Krynn could become a world of Free Realms again.

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