From Library Journal
When an assassination attempt leaves Molin Torchholder near death, the aging former priest of the war-god Vashanka and longtime possessor of the history and secrets of the city of Sanctuary seeks a successor to carry his burden of hidden knowledge. His search leads him not only to a youth named Cauvin, a survivor of an era when the vicious cult of the Bloody Hand ruled Sanctuary, but also to the realization that danger still threatens the city. The originator of the popular "Thieves' World" novels, the first shared-world fantasy environment, has returned to a world where vice and decadence coexist with heroism and self-sacrifice in a heady blend of atmosphere and adventure that should appeal to fans of the original series as well as newcomers. Highly recommended.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
The grim city of Sanctuary in the Thieves' World series is the scene of this freestanding companion to editor Abbey's hefty novel Sanctuary [BKL Ap 15 02]. A volume of stories, it opens with stonemason Cauvin inheriting guardian Molin Torchholder's memories and thereby becoming the man who knows where all the bodies--not to mention treasure, amulets of power, arsenals, and so forth--in Sanctuary are buried. His acquired recollections thereafter provide quite a tour of contemporary Sanctuary, beginning with Mickey Zucker Reichart's "Home Is Where the Hate Is," about a crippled orphan thief who wangles himself into an order of priestesses' good graces, and ending with sorcerer Jake the Rat and his lady adopting a stray dog in Raymond E. Feist's "One to Go." In between are duels of magic, of steel, and of wits, and quite a panorama of Sanctuary history. Most noteworthy among the historical glimpses is Andrew Offutt's "Role Model: A Tale of Apprentices," in which a youthful wanna-be becomes a real potential heir. Much good reading, here for the taking. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“ Fans of Thieves' World will relish this sprawling epic, rich with sword and sorcery ... and after ten years, the gates to this famed city are reopened, assuring all that more adventures are just around the corner” - Publishers Weekly
“Good news for all heroic fantasy fans.” - Booklist
“Although this is primarily an adventure story, and a pretty good one at that, it is also a richer and more detailed novel ... the book is both more ambitious and more rewarding than most similar fantasy adventures, as well as providing a nostalgic return to the Thieves' World”-- Science Fiction Chronicle
About the Author
Lynn Abbey lives in Leesburg, Florida. She and her ex-husband created Thieves' World over twenty years ago, where it launched the shared world anthology subgenre. She is also the author of the successful Behind Time series for Ace.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Sanctuary
Chapter One
A full moon shone over Sanctuary, revealing boats in its harbor, dwellings within and without its coiled walls. The city appeared prosperous, but Sanctuary always shone brightest at night. In sunlight, a man standing on the eastern ridge overlooking the city would see that the largest boats tied up along the piers were rotting hulks, that roofs were missing all over town, and the great walls had been breached by neglect in several places.
Sanctuary could have looked worse and had many times during the half century that Molin Torchholder had--however reluctantly--called it home. Gods had fought--and lost--their private wars on Sanctuary's streets, but the city went on, resilient, incorrigible, just possibly eternal. Its citizens repelled catastrophe as readily as they squandered prosperity. Time and time again, Molin had watched fire, storm, plague, invasion, and sheer madness sweep through the city, carrying it to the brink of annihilation, only to ebb away, like the tide shrinking from the hard, black rocks wrapped around its harbor.
And should Molin Torchholder call himself a citizen of Sanctuary?
In the morning years of his ninth decade, no one would deny Molin the right to call himself whatever he wished. He preferred to think of himself as Rankan. Born in the Imperial capital, raised by priests of the war-god, Vashanka, and risen to the heights of their hierarchy before his twenty-fifth birthday, Molin Torchholder had been marked as a man with a glorious future. Then he'd come to Sanctuary, a city on the edge of nowhere, a city so far removed from the Imperial Court of Ranke that an insecure emperor had thoughtit a safe place in which to exile an inconvenient half brother when a sudden attack of conscience stopped the fratricide the Imperial advisors--including the high priests of Vashanka--had suggested.
I'll be here a year, Molin had thought the first time he'd ridden down this road. One insufferable year, then he'd be back in Ranke, accumulating power, wealth, and a legacy for the ages. His god had had other ideas. Molin's god had a taste for blood and chaos and once He'd gotten a taste of Sanctuary's particular squalor, Vashanka couldn't push the plate away.
Vashanka had amused Himself with children, thieves, and the pangs of lust. The war-god of the mightiest empire in the world had made an immortal fool of Himself for years. Spurred by immortal embarrassment, divine powers both great and small had allied to erase Vashanka's name from the white-marble lintel of His own temple--from the temple Molin himself had raised in His honor. Reduced to little more than an itch on the world's behind, the great Vashanka had slunk out of Sanctuary on a night very much like this one more than forty years ago.
Molin hadn't felt his god's departure until the next morning when he'd encountered an indescribable absence during his daily prayers. Vashanka's come to His senses and returned to Ranke; Molin had thought, little realizing that Vashanka had gone not home, but into exile. Worse--the divine powers that had run Vashanka out of Sanctuary had condemned him--him!--to remain within its walls.
From the beginning Molin had loathed everything about Sanctuary: its wretched, soggy climate; the brackish taste of its water; and, especially, its citizens. He swore he could never be reconciled to an unjust fate; then the moon would rise and he'd be drawn to the roof above his palace apartment--or find himself delayed on the East Ridge Road. His thoughts would wander, and Sanctuary would take his soul by surprise, flexing its claws, reminding him of what he tried so hard to forget: This place, and none other, was home.
Footfalls drew Torchholder's attention away from the rooftops of Sanctuary. He turned in time to see his escort, a man scarcely a quarter his age, climb out of the roadside ditch. Atredan Larris Serripines' face was paler than the moon and shiny with sweat but, on the whole, he looked a good deal better than he had when he'd staggered into the grass.
"Better now?" Molin asked pleasantly.
Atredan favored him with a scowl. "So much for Father's Foundation Day Feast."
In another time and place, Lord Serripines' second son might have amounted to something. He had the golden hair and hazel eyes of a true Rankan aristocrat, an amiable personality, and the sense not to get caught when he succumbed to temptation. Lesser men had ruled well in Ranke. But in Sanctuary, a generation after an eastern horde had brought fire, rape, pillage, and death to the Empire's heart, Atredan was doomed to ambition without prospects.
No commemoration of the Imperial Founding, however precisely observed, could change that.
Molin dug into his scrip and found a sprig of mint twisted with other herbs, which he offered to the younger man. "I think you'll find it settles what's left and takes the taste away." When one indulged as the Imperial court in its prime had indulged, one never forgot its remedies and kept them forever close to hand.
Atredan had refused the digestive when Molin had first offered it, but took it gratefully now and chewed hard. Within moments his face had relaxed.
"Gods all be damned, Lord Torchholder, I can't believe any emperor has ever sat through a meal like that! The food. The wine--especially that wine. Anen's mercy, what did my lord father put in it this year?"
Never mind that Anen was the Ilsigi god of vineyards and anathema to the Rankan pantheon, Atredan had a valid argument.
"Honey," Molin replied with an honest sigh. "A comb of Imperial honey, straight from the Imperial hives, the Imperial garden, and the Imperial pantry. The genuine article--or so he told me. Very rare these days."
"Very expensive," Atredan corrected. "Very old, very spoilt, and fit only for swine or my lord father's Foundation Day table."
"That is not for me to say," Molin said diplomatically and--because he was, among many other things, an accomplished diplomat--he made it clear that he would have agreed with the young man, had it been necessary to do so.
Diplomatic nuance was wasted on the Serripines' cadet heir. "Did you actually drink that swill?"
"I'm an old man, Lord Larris, and my palate is as old as the rest of me. Swill or ambrosia, it all tastes the same now--Yet, I am sure the wine we drank in Ranke was not so sweet ... or gluey. And neither did we ferment it ourselves. Truth to tell--we seldom drank Imperial wine, with or without Imperial honey. All the best vintages came by ship from Caronne. They still do, I suppose, but not to Sanctuary. Have a care for your lord father. He was a babe-in-arms when Ranke fell. He dreams of Rankan glory, but he doesn't remember it."
Atredan muttered words too soft and slurred for Molin to catch. The indignities of age! His reputation had been built on his eyes and his ears. Time was when no word or gesture had escaped his senses; that time was gone. It was true that younger men still complimented him and relied on his advice, but they had no idea how much of his edge he'd lost.
Or how tired he had become.
"Come," he urged his escort, "it's time to get me home to my bed."
"You could have stayed at Land's End. My lord father loves nothing better than to have the Lord Torchholder sleeping beneath his roof. A veritable hero and not merely of Sanctuary--as if Sanctuary could nurture a true hero--but of the Empire."
"For all the good my heroics have done me." Molin chuckled. "After two nights beneath your lord father's roof, I've told all the stories of Imperial glory that I can remember. I've drunk his wine and lit his bonfire. The Imperial ancestors have been properly honored, a new Imperial year is safely begun, and I'm ready to go home."
Atredan cocked his head in the moonlight. "You think we are all fools, don't you, Lord Torchholder? My father, the Rankans he shelters at Land's End ... me."
"All men are fools, Lord Larris--you, me, your lord father, and all the men and women beneath his roof. The nature of men is foolishness. Never forget it."
"But the Serripines more than others, because Father believes Ranke will be mighty again, and that will never happen."
"Only a fool says 'never' when speaking of the future."
"There's no future for the dead. There is no future, not for us,not for Ranke. We're like fish in a weir. We sing praises each time it rains, but the fact is, we're trapped, and if the rains don't come, we die. Only sooner, rather than later."
Molin gave Atredan a second look--he'd never before suspected that the young man had a bent for philosophy, and although he generally agreed with Atredan's dreary assessment of Rankan prospects, he offered up a scrap of encouragement: "Sanctuary's a coastal town, my boy. The tide comes in twice a day, no matter the rain. A man may drown, but he'll surely never shrivel."
"My lord father has shriveled. He hasn't set foot in Sanctuary since the Bleeding Hand killed my mother. He lives in his own world at Land's End with his back to the sea, waiting for an army that will never come to take back a city that was never his."
Molin didn't like to talk about the years when the Dyareelan fanatics had ruled Sanctuary. Neither did anyone who'd managed, somehow, to survive. The Serripines had gotten off lightly, retreating behind the walls of their fortresslike estate. But Molin would never say that to a son who'd seen his mother disemboweled, nor to her shattered husband. He temporized instead. "Your lord father feels obligated to comfort those whom the emperor has abandoned."
And, in truth, it wasn't Lord Serripines who made each Land's End visit feel like an early trip to the boneyard. If the sack of Ranke had been the most unexpected event in Molin's lifetime, the transformation of the Sanctuary hillsides from scrubland to...
