Robert Asprin: Soul of the City

The Townspeople

AHDIOVIZUN; AHDIOMER viz; AHDIO, Proprietor of Sty's Place, a legendary dive within the Maze.

LALO THE LIMNER, Street artist gifted with magic he does not fully understand.

GILLA, His indomitable wife.

ALFI, Their youngest son.

LATILLA, Their daughter.

OANNER, Their middle son, slain during the False Plague riots of the previous winter.

VANDA, Their daughter, employed as maid-servant to the Beysib at the palace.

WEDEMIR, Their son and eldest child.

DUBRO, Bazaar blacksmith and husband to Illyra.

ILLYRA, Half-blood S'danzo seeress with True Sight. Hounded by PFLS in the False Plague.

ARTON, Their son, marked by the gods and magic as part of an emerging divinity known as the Stormchildren. Sent to the Bandaran Isles for his safety and education.

ULLIS, Their daughter, slain in the False Plague riots.

HAKIEM, Storyteller and confidant extraordinaire.

JUBAL, Prematurely aged former gladiator. Once he openly ran Sanctuary's most visible criminal organization, the Hawkmasks. Now he works behind the scenes.

SALIMAN, His aide and only friend.

MAMA BECHO, Owner of a particularly disreputable tavern in Downwind.

MASHA ZIL-INEEL, Midwife whose involvement with the destruction of the Purple Mage enabled her to move from the Maze to respectability uptown.

MORIA, One-time Hawkmask and servant to Ischade. She was physically transformed into a Rankan noblewoman by Haught.

MYRTIS, Madam of the Aphrodesia House.

SHAFRALAIN, Sanctuary nobleman who can trace his lineage and his money back to the days of llsig's glory.

ESARIA, His daughter.

EXPIMILIA, His wife. CUSHARLAIN, His cousin. A customs inspector and investigator.

SNAPPER JO, A fiend who survived the destruction of magic in Sanctuary.

STILCHO, Once one of Ischade's resurrected minions, he was "cured" of death when magic was purged from Sanctuary.

ZIP, Bitter young terrorist. Leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary (PFLS).

The Magicians

HAUGHT, One-time apprentice of Ischade who betrayed her and is now trapped in a warded house with Roxane.

ISCHADE, Necromancer and thief. Her curse is passed to her lovers who die from it.

ROXANE; DEATH'S QUEEN, Nisibisi witch. Nearly destroyed when Stormbringer purged magic from Sanctuary, she is trapped inside a warded house and a dead man's body.

Others

THERON, New military Emperor. An usurper placed on the throne with the aid ofTempus and his allies. He has commanded that Sanctuary's walls must be rebuilt by the next New Year Festival.

The Rankans living in Sanctuary

CHENAYA; DAUGHTER OF THE SUN, Daughter of LOW an Vigeles, a beautiful and powerful young woman who is fated never to lose a fight. DAYRNE, Her companion and trainer.

LEYN, OUUEN, DISMAS AND GESTUS, Her friends and fellow gladiators.

GYSKOURAS, One of the Stormchildren, currently in the Bandar an Isles for education.

PRINCE KADAKITHIS, Charismatic but somewhat naive half-brother of the recently assassinated Emperor, Abakithis.

DAPHNE, His estranged wife, living with Chenaya's gladiators at Land's End.

KAMA; JES, Tempus' daughter. 3rd Commando assassin. Sometime lover of both Zip and Molin Torchholder.

LOWAN VIGELES, Half-brother of Molin Torchholder, father of Chenaya, a wealthy aristocrat self-exiled to Sanctuary. Owner of the Land's End Estate.

MOLIN TORCHHOLDER; TORCH, Archpriest and architect of Vashanka; Guardian of the Stormchildren.

ROSANDA, His estranged wife, living at Land's End.

RANKAN 3RD COMMANDO, Mercenary company founded by Tempus Thales and noted for its brutal efficiency.

SYNC, Commander of the 3rd.

RASHAN; THE EYE OF THE SAVANKALA, Priest and Judge of Sanvankala. Highest ranking Rankan in Sanctuary prior to the arrival of the Prince, now allied with Chenaya's disaffected Rankans at Land's End.

STEPSONS; SACRED BANDERS, Members of a mercenary unit founded by Abarsis who willed their allegiance to Tempus Thales after his own death. CRITIAS; CRIT, Leftside leader paired with Straton. Second in command after Tempus.

RANDAL; WITCHY-EARS, The only mage ever trusted by Tempus or admitted into the Sacred Band.

STRATON; STRAT; ACE, Rightside partner of Critias. Injured by the PFLS at the start of the False Plague riots.

TASFALEN LANCOTHIS, Jaded nobleman, slain by Ischade's curse, then resurrected by Haught. His body has become Roxane's prison.

TEMPOS THALES; THE RIDDLER, Nearly immortal mercenary, a partner of Vashanka before that god's demise; commander of the Stepsons; cursed with a fatal inability to give or receive love.

WALEGRIN, Rankan army officer assigned to the Sanctuary garrison where his father had been slain by the S'danzo many years before.

The Gods

DYAREELA, A goddess whose worship in Sanctuary predates the Ilsigi presence and which has been outlawed many times since then.

HARRAN, Physician and priest to Siveni Gray-Eyes, now part of her four-fold divinity.

MRIGA, Mindless and crippled woman elevated to four-fold divinity with Siveni Gray-Eyes.

SABELLIA, Mother goddess for the Rankan Empire.

SAVANKALA, Father god for the Rankan Empire.

SIVENI GRAY-EYES, Ilsigi goddess of wisdom, medicine and defense, now transformed into a four-fold diety.

SHIPRI, Mother goddess of the old Ilsigi kingdom.

STORMBRINGER, Primal stormgodlwargod. The pattern for all other such gods, he is not, himself, the object of organized worship.

JIHAN, Froth Daughter. His parthenogenic offspring, betrothed to the Stepson's mage, Randal.

The Beysib

SHUPANSEA; SHU-SEA, Head of the Beysib exiles in Sanctuary; mortal avatar of the Beysib mother goddess.

Tempus, a mercenary general in the service of Ranke's new emperor, was knee-deep in the bloody purges marking the first winter of Theron's accession to the Rankan throne when the sky above the walled city began to weep black tears.

By the time dawn should have broken, ashen clouds massed to the very vault of heaven so that not even the Sun God's sharpest rays could pierce the arrayed armies of the night. The city of Ranke, once the brightest jewel of the Rankan empire, shuddered in the dark, her ochre walls stained dusky from the storm's black and ugly might.

Thunder growled; winds yowled. Black hail pelted Theron's palace, shattering windows and pounding doors. On temple streets and cultured byways it bounced, sharp as diamonds and large as heads, bringing impious priests to their knees and cheap nobles to charity in slick streets covered with greasy slush freezing to ice as black, some said, as their emperor Theron's heart.

For all knew that Theron had come to power in a coup instigated by the armies-he was a creature of blood, a wild beast of the battlefield. And the proof of this was in the allies who had brought him to the Imperial palace: Nisibisi witches, demons of the black beyond, devils of horrid aspect, even the feared near immortals of the blood cults-Askelon, the lord of dreams, and his brother-in-law Tempus, demigod and favorite son of Vashanka, the Rankan wargod, to name but two- had lent their strength to Theron's cause.

Did not Tempus still labor at his gory task of purging the disloyal-all who had been influential in Abakithis's court? Did not women still wake to empty beds and find pouches made of human skin and filled with thirty gold soldats (the Rankan price for one human life) nailed to their boudoir doors?

Did not those few remaining adherents of Abakithis, former emperor of Ranke (now deceased, unavenged, much cursed in his uneasy grave), still scuttle even through the deadly, knife-sharp hail with bulging pockets to the mercenaries' guildhall to leave their fortunes at the desk with scrawled notes saying, "For Tempus, to distribute as he wills, from the admiring and loyal family of So-and So," while servants spirited noble wives and children out back ways and slumyard gates in beggars' guise?