Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

stories. My not-gypsy read not-Tarot cards, dealt with necromancers, stole a

corpse and witnessed the usual street violence.

It didn’t seem too bad until I found the entire book oozing out of my mailbox

and read the volume in its entirety. We had Crom-many drugs, magicians, vices,

brothels, dives, haunts, curses and feuds. Sanctuary wasn’t a provincial

backwater; it wasn’t even the Imperial armpit; it was the Black Hole of not

Calcutta. Things could only get worse …

And they did. Bob told us the second volume would be called Tales from the

Vulgar Unicorn – the very name incited depravity. And we rose to the occasion

or perhaps we fell. I explored the unpleasant pieces of my S’danzo’s past. gave

her a berserker for a half-brother and created Buboe, the night bartender down

at the Vulgar Unicorn. Well, Bob said we were supposed to have a scene down at

the ol’ V.U. – but One-Thumb was hors de combat in the bowels of Sanctuary and

no one knew who was running the joint. (I recall one of my confreres created

someone called Two-Thumbs – I think that was from spite.) Buboe – a buboe isn’t

a person, a buboe is the rather large glandular eruption that accompanies the

terminal stages of the Black Plague; opening it ensures death for the opener and

the openee.

Tales didn’t ooze out of the mailbox; it ate right through the metal. I haven’t

seen all the stories for volume three yet, but I’m confident the downward spiral

has continued. Each set of stories brings new oddments of human behaviour, new

quirks of character that the authors wouldn’t dare put in a universe for which