The wind shifted and the stench of the city assaulted him After the long nde through the clean desert the smell was a physical force, full of wet decay, the smell of man at his worst. Victim and hunter were all the same in Sanctuary The evil of his birthplace was alive, active, infecting everything that came into contact with it.
The sun was going down, dusk slowly covered the decrepitude of the city’s ancient buildings, but the shadows could not hide it all, even from this distance. Cade was surprised to see a new wall going up around the town but it hardly helped the view, for surely that wall was not so much to keep enemies out as the inhabitants in. Even a madman would see there was no gain to be had by conquering Sanctuary
Cade smiled to himself at the thought Attack Sanctuary-better to fight for a beggar’s bowl He turned to face west. A house or something burned sullenly there, ignored by the inhabitants of Downwind, the worst part of the whole place. Downwind .
And that, he told himself, is a place and a name you promised never to have anything to do with again But of course he knew promises meant nothing m hell . .
If Sanctuary could be called the place of his birth, it was Downwind that had created him There he had lived between the age of six and sixteen There he had learned about the world, the real world, the truth behind all the lies that men blind themselves with He had learned about fear, fear in his poor brother’s eyes, who had always tried to protect his younger sibling, even though it was Cade who was the real protector He learned of despair, as the money became scarcer and the food rarer, and their mother did anything, anything, so that she could keep her little family together