Book 1 - The Tyranny of the Night Read Online Free Page A

prejudice against those dead
who had practiced their trade a long time. Of the ancient dead of Andesqueluz,
the Demon Kingdom, whose sorcerer kings' accursed relicts Else's Company had
pilfered from their tombs, Bone's opinion consisted of irrational hatred deeply
awash in stark terror. These days the Demon Kingdom was lost in the backwaters
of history, known intimately only to scholars, but echoes of the terrible truth
lived on in myth and fairy tale.
    But Bone was a good soldier.
    Sha-lug was synonymous with Good Soldier.
    There were no incidents that night Nevertheless, Else did not sleep well. He
could not help anticipating further deviltry from the night
    Al-Azer claimed that the supernatural reverberations of the bogon's destruction
had not damped out yet Anything might be attempted by sorcerers who wanted to
spy on their neighbors during such unsettled times.

    ELSE DID NOT POSSESS AN IMAGINATION ADEQUATE TO ENCOMPASS the magnitude of his
one cannon blast. None of the company but al-Azer er-Selim realized that the
blast had changed the world forever.
    Al-Azer would never speak the words. He would not write them down. Few mortals
would realize the truth, even within the supernatural trades. 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 the 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 the 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.
    Understanding left Az filled with stark terror. The falcon's blast might catch
the eyes of the gods themselves.
    The gods—pressed, al-Azer would admit that there were more gods than the One
God, the True God, There Is No Other—were not known for indulging mortal
behaviors offensive enough to be noticed. In particular, they would resent the
threat to their own dominion.
    Else did not know what he had done. A threat revealed itself. He did what he was
supposed to do. He dealt with it based on hearsay and the tools at hand.
    Al-Azer rested more poorly than did his captain.

    A SMALL WARSHIP SHOWING THE BANNER OF AL-MlNPHET Appeared early next morning.
The vessel brought a letter from Gordimer, meant for Else if the ship happened
upon him.
    Else