The King: The Castle Builder and The Magician (cont).
The castle builder has contacted the magician today to say that the papers will be likely to be re-written this week. The magician had asked for the wording of the contract to be changed, so that any unexpected behavior by the magic due to unforeseen irregularities in the construction work done by the castle builders appointed men will not be the responsibility of the magician. And the magician has done as he was asked by the castle builder, and found someone prepared to pay the castle builder large amounts of money should the magic go wrong and behave strangely in the future, or the magic supplied by the magician turns out to be pinched or stolen from another magician without them knowing about it. The magician has agreed to pay one hundred and eighty four gold coins per year to the provider of this service in case his magic turns out to be stolen or behave in strange unexpected ways. This is the first time the magician has been unable to avoid this extra cost as previous patrons have withdrawn their requests, but the castle builder has insisted.
So things are close to actually exchanging magic for money about two years after the magician was asked to supply the magic in the first place. The magician is mentally preparing himself now to actually make this magic. This will require many months of careful work and will need a considerable amount of commitment and emotional investment to complete and install. These large commitments (under time deadlines) are the ones that the magician wonders if he still has the stamina to deliver.
The magician looked at the designs he made all that time ago and wondered if he would still be able to connect with the ideas he had back then? That is when he remembered that the built environment around the magic was not completed to the original idea. What was actually built was very different but the magic stayed the same. The magician remembered that this was a job and best not waste energy worrying about if this or if that, but just get on with it.
