The world was ever thus.

The mage school, and there is but one, lies in Alden Holding because it can be nowhere else in Tananen. Those who tried, failed, The Deathless Goddess making it plain where She wished mages to learn Her Words, and where She did not.

Mage scribes, being contrary, claim their school is where it is because of a central location, moderate climate, and Alden Hold being amenable to their presence.

Loremasters and historians point out the school has been rebuilt following catastrophe on the selfsame spot since records began. Again, mages have an answer. Or rather, a question. Why change?

We were left alone.

And yet have never been, for should the mage school be destroyed, as has happened over time, there is always a new one. Always new students and masters, however reluctant, to teach them. Always daughters to restore any of Her Words lost. Always magic, demanding to be written.

Magic, once, was not written at all.

Now it is, by mage scribes trained at the school, the only school there is, in the only land with magic left in all the world, and the real question to be asked, that no one ever does?

Is why.