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urged. “He had someone to fight. Someone to
     test him, heart and wit and hand. Sing of Huma.” Her small hands tapping the rim of her
     precious drum, the bard began:
    Out of the village, out of the thatched and clutching shires, Out of the grave and furrow,
     furrow and grave, Where his sword first tried the last cruel dances of childhood . . .
    Larken's was a soaring voice, a firm and powerful instrument that erased time and space.
     Fordus closed his eyes and settled into the old story, which ran its course under the
     bard's skillful rendering. “Those were the times,” he said, the song ended and the drum
     silent after a last, fading roll. “The times and the great adventures. When the shape of
     the story was larger than the lives of men. ”We have fallen on meaner times, Larken. The
     great villains are gone, and the great heroes. Who will stand against me now?" They both
     fell silent as the rising red moon streaked the tents of the Plainsmen. Overhead, in a
     last circling- flight before evening, Lucas called and banked in the light westering sun,
     amber rays still
    dancing over the tips of his wings like mastfire. “Josef Monoculus was a fool,” Fordus
     declared. “So are all the Istarian generals, all the fabled and fine Solamnic commanders.
     But perhaps the King-priest ...” He propped himself on his elbows, stared eagerly at
     Larken. “Perhaps the Kingpriest!” he said again. “For he is a mystery who stands at the
     head of a great army. He is not only a manhe is a great and wondrous idea. ”And he speaks
     with the gods, as do I. Or so the starians say.“ Fordus stroked his red beard
     thoughtfully. ”I pray that he is worthy of me. A man must have great enemies when his
     friends are small. If he has neither enemy nor friend to match his noble spirit, he is
     straitened, imprisoned. Forced to grow crooked in confinement. “Without a worthy enemy,
     the world is a damnable wasteland.” For a long time he scanned the darkening camp below,
     and the sun sank from view, and only the red moon rode in the desert sky.

Dragonlance - Villains 6 - The Dark Queen
    Chapter 3
    By day Fordus's world was barren, sun-beaten, a country of exotic colorsof red and black
     rock and ochre earth and of hazy white salt flats, their crystals rising over the lifeless
     landscape like frozen, abstract trees. It was a country of extremes and sharp edges, of
     large sufferings and small deaths.
    It was the desert night that Fordus loved most, especially when red Lunitari rode high
     overhead. In the darkness, the desert was transformed. The desolate landscape deepened
     with shadows, the salt flats glittered like discarded gems, and strange, nocturnal
     creatures ventured out of the dried arroyos. The air became temperate, almost cool, and
     sometimes a stray wind coursed over the dunes, bearing in its wake the faint whiff of
     cedar from Silvanesti or salt from the seas south of Balifor, snaking over the flats and
     the dry arroyos as though seeking water, or a body into which it could breathe its distant
     life.
    The night sands were Fordus's refuge and his school, his peace and his nourishment. And
     so, after every victory, he returned to them. But this time he returned in doubt and
     double-mindedness. His long robe wrapped around him, he dreamed. This night it was the
     lava dreamvivid and long known to himthe same dream that had first come to him at the edge
     of the Tears of Mishakal a year ago.
    This dream had exalted him, lifted him from a destiny of water prophecy, a station of more
     impor- tance than he'd ever dreamed or sought, and made him king of the desert. The dream
     came as it always didevery detail the same as it had been the first time. And his
     response, as well, was the same, as though he acted in an ancient ritual play, performing
     an eternal seasonal role: Lord Winter, perhaps, or Branchala in the intricate elf-dramas
     Stormlight had told him