The ancient city of Arvarnneth has:
the Lairs, bounded by Fountain Street
the Avenue of Dragons
the Old Bastion
the militia-guarded Council House
the Hollow Houses, an abandoned area of ruinous streets with a small farm in a former stadium
the Royal Canal
abbeys
temples
tombs
Palace Row
topiaries and flowers in the Garden of Elzia
rented canoes on Lake Narmu
the Patrician Bridge
pushcarts selling steamed catfish and baked yams
Pelican Lane
the Grand Arena, not used for the last hundred years
Fountain Circus
Some of it sounds like Ys. See Elven Gardens and Recapitulation.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
While this description of Arvanneth does sound like Ys in some ways, I also thought it seemed more like Constantinople during the last 150 years of the Eastern Roman Empire, before the Turkish conquest of 1453. Recall how New Rome was described in ROGUE SWORD, with abandoned quarters much like the Hollow Houses, churches and monasteries, the great main road called the Mese, and the abandoned Arena was analogous to how the Hippodrome of Constantinople had also been left to ruin during the last years of Byzantium.
Sean
Sean,
I do not recall it! - but will reread ROGUE SWORD.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
ROGUE SWORD is one of Poul Anderson's fiercer and grimmer novels, focusing as it did on the depredations of the Aragonese Grand Company of mercenaries, BUT very much worth reading.
Anderson was unflinching in his descriptions of how cruel and merciless the Catalans were, but he also showed why they behaved as they did--largely because of the folly and treachery of the Byzantine leaders.
Sean
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