“My court,” he continued, “since you choose to call it that, consists of four men-at-arms. I would do without them if I could, for they cost more than they are worth, like everything else. But they take their turns as sentries, and as cooks, and they give the appearance of an army, from a distance. What other attendants should I need?”

“But the pleasures of court,” the magician cried, “the music, the talk, the women and the fountains, the hunts and the masques and the great feasts—”

“They are nothing to me,” King Haggard said. “I have known them all, and they have not made me happy. I will keep nothing near me that does not make me happy.”

The Lady Amalthea moved quietly past him to the window, and looked out at the night sea.

Schmendrick came about to catch the wind again, and declared, “I understand you perfectly! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to you all the uses of this world! You are bored with bliss, satiated with sensation, jaded with jejune joys. It is a king’s affliction, and therefore no one wants the services of a magician more than a king does. For only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows the secret of change, only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness to become something else, and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power. To a magician, March is May, snow is green and grass is gray; this is that, or whatever you say. Get a magician today!”

He finished on one knee with both arms flung wide. King Haggard stepped nervously away from him, muttering, “Get up, get up, you make my head hurt. Besides, I already have a royal magician.”

Schmendrick rose heavily to his feet, his face red and empty. “You never said. What is his name?”

“He is called Mabruk,” King Haggard replied. “I do not often speak of him. Even my men-at-arms do not know that he lives here in the castle. Mabruk is all that you have said a wizard should be, and much more that I doubt you dream of. He is known in his trade as ‘the magician’s magician.’ I can see no reason to replace him with some vagrant, nameless, clownish—”

“Ah, but I can!” Schmendrick broke in desperately. “I can think of one reason, uttered by you yourself not a minute since. This marvelous Mabruk does not make you happy.”

Over the king’s fierce face there fell a slow shadow of disappointment and betrayal. For a breath, he looked like a bewildered young man. “Why no, that is true,” King Haggard murmured. “Mabruk’s magic has not delighted me for a long time. How long has it been, I wonder?” He clapped his hands briskly, crying out “Mabruk! Mabruk! Appear, Mabruk!”

“I am here,” said a deep voice from a far corner of the room. An old man in a dark, spangled gown and a pointed, spangled hat was standing there, and no one could say surely that he had not been standing there in plain sight since they entered the throne room. His beard and brows were white, and the cast of his face was mild and wise, but his eyes were as hard as hailstones. “What does Your Majesty wish of me?”