Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

he or she was solely responsible. In Sanctuary, though, where guilt is shared

along with the glory, one volume’s innuendo becomes the next volume’s complete

story.

And frankly, nastiness is interesting. If I tell you that the smell of rotting

blood can linger for years you might not notice what I don’t tell you. Consider

for a moment some of the things none of the authors know for sure: the weather

in Sanctuary – daily and seasonal. It must be strange. If the Downwinders are

downwind of the town then the prevailing wind is off the land – try convincing

any coast-dweller of that.

As far as the city itself is concerned, I’ve always imagined it as a sort of

late medieval town, out-growing its walls. The Maze is built like the Shambles

in York, England, where each storey gets built out over the lower one so

everybody can drop their slops directly into the street instead of on their

neighbour. There are those who seem to think Sanctuary’s like Rome. (Nonsense,

Ranke is Rome – or is it that Rome is rank?) They imagine that the town has the

rudiments of sewer systems, that the villas are attractive, open buildings and

that at least some of the streets are paved. There also seems to be a Baghdad

by-the-Sea approach, with turban’d tribesmen and silk-clad ladies, as well as a

few indications that we might be dealing with a Babylonian building style. Since

so many of our stories are set in the dark, I suppose it doesn’t matter that we

don’t really agree on what the city looks like.

Of course, nobody, including the Empire, knows how big Sanctuary really is.