as the novel begins, the reader hears an old storyteller speaking of a famous old wizard called taborlin the great, who was captured by evil beings called the chandrian. escaping them, taborlin fell from a great height—but since he knew the "name of the wind", he called it and the wind came and set him down safely. in later parts of the book, characters are often skeptical of such stories. some kinds of magic are taught in the university as academic disciplines and have daily-life applications (those who can afford it are able to buy magical lamps, for example, much better than the candles used by poorer people). however, most of the population does not have reliable knowledge of the magical disciplines and many still doubt that magicians can truly call upon the wind. the chandrian—whose appearance is supposedly heralded by flames turning blue—are often dismissed as mythical bogeymen.