Magick is demonstrably a science of miracles on a par with those of the
clerics. Of course Lord Avasyu made your weapons and armor, you idiot.
What of it? Can you walk on water? Can you call fire to yourself in a
raging blizzard? Can you jump from Kinsarmar to Khandava, eat a shank,
then jump back again in the space of three breaths? Can you perform in
three millennia any one of the hundred wonders I will accomplish before
the day is out? And I have not even attained full magery yet. Explaining
to you that these are essentially divine emanations is like explaining
to a dog --a misborn, drowning dog!-- that water is wet.

Moreover, magical scholarship is not the facile citation of dubious
sources, but the work of hard meticulous years. IN the Guild we study
languages and the many different papers on which they are imprinted. We
are trained in subtleties of grammar, syntax and idiom. Do you know the
differences between Khandavan and Kinsarmarian vellum? Do you know the
word for "fish" in three distinct Sidhe dialects of the Waelin River
valley? Or the reason Muamrite sorcerors wrote on goatskin during the
last half of the First Age and sheepskin by the middle of the Second?
There are some who are qualified to test my authority in these matters,
but you are not one of them. You are not qualified to judge a dogfight,
let alone issues of provenance.

Vivaine, on the other hand, is qualified. As our Chief Librarian, she
could point to the shelf on which the scroll called "The Mystic Blood"
is housed and tell you that it is attested by two hostile and
contemporary sources. But you would never be admitted to our Guild
house. And though Vivaine is a kind and gracious lady, she does not
converse with dogs.

And you challenge my assertions? Well, I challenge yours. What makes
magick a "tainted art" other than your say so? I will bend my ear to
hear, but I may need some help with translation. I have not studied the
canine dialects in years.




Penned by my hand on the 12th of Ultio, in the year 457 AD.