Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

towards the terrified men in white.

Screaming, despite the drugs, they raced through the tent as he winnowed through

their numbers. The wisest, least drugged, plunged through the netting into the

company of musicians. The man-god stalked his ersatz-brethren as if the darkness

did not exist and with a vicious determination that bespoke his acceptance

of the role. He shoved the shrieking women aside with his free hand and

delivered the final strokes with the bloody sword. The killing completed, he

set about gathering the heads of his enemies and placing them in a gory heap

on the banquet table -a task made no easier to do or watch by the edgeless

sword he wielded.

Still kneeling among the pillows, Seylalha drew the sheer silk tightly around

herself, twisting the loose ends about her arms until she had become a sea

-green statue, for the cloth did nothing to conceal her beauty and little to

conceal her pale, quivering fear. When the blood-smeared stranger who was more

god than man had placed the last trophy upon the table he vented his divine

violence on the woman-garbed eunuchs. Seylalha pulled the pins from her hair;

the honey-brown cascade covered her eyes and hid her from the sight of the

guardians lying butchered on the ground. She took fistfuls of hair and pressed

them against her ears, but that was not enough to block the knowledge of how the

half-men had died. As she had done so many times as a child and as a woman, she

began to rock back and forth, keening softly to gods whose names she had long