But that one inspired blast had proclaimed the imminent end of Mankind's long subjugation to the Tyranny of the Night. Mankind now had a means to contest with the gods themselves, did Man but realize it for even the greatest gods were nothing more than bogons on a mightier scale, some with a dollop of intellect The Wells of Mian vented concentrated magical power, the fertilizer in which the things of night flourished. The Holy Lands seethed with supernatural beings. The region was as critical to the Instrumentalities of the Night as it was to the religions that considered the Wells of Ihrian the Holy Lands.

There were dozens of other wells of magic scattered around the world but none were as potent as those found in the Holy Lands. Nor as concentrated. And all the wells, everywhere, were in a weakening cycle. Which meant a more difficult existence for the Instrumentalities of the Night, much harder work for sorcerers, and a lot more cold along the bounds of the inhabited world.

The greatest, least recognized power of me wells was that their magic kept the ice at bay.

Nothing about the wells was common knowledge. Changes in their flow were never obvious. Nor was the advance or retreat of the ice along the bounds of the world.

Both the Written and secular historical documents mentioned lions, apes, and wolves in lands around the Mother Sea. In antiquity. The lions had been hunted out by classical times. Apes survived only in the extreme west, in small numbers. Wolves could be found in the forests of die north and the mountains beyond the Kaifate of Qasr-al-Zed. Even the forests around the Mother Sea were, mostly, gone now.

And now a way had been found to tame the Instrumentalities of the Night. Now a man like Else, with no mystical talent whatsoever, with not one of those delicate skills a sorcerer honed for decades so as to manipulate a few minor spirits, could butcher a count of the night as easily as he could exterminate his own kind.