It is a fact known to many that a wizard is most vulnerable at one instant in their long and devious careers: right after graduation. They have shed the cocoon of academic licensing but remain damp with debts and dues and fees, and their wondrous exoskeletons have yet to harden in the dry air of the world. That’s when you pounce and devour them.
Metaphorically, of course. Herbie the Magnificent wasn’t interested in eating people; he employed others for that sort of thing. What he wanted was something more.
“What I want is something more,” he told the wary and kneeling form of the (just graduated; the trollskin diploma was still crisply affixed on its placard of giant’s-toenail) Wizard Morby Jones. “Always have, always will. I have the ambition of ten men and the money of ten thousand plus, and both are always greedy for more. And I want a home. A citadel. A fortress. A bastion whose fortifications can repel any foe, turn away any beggar, daunt any tax-collection. And you will build this for me. No cost is too great.”
“Really?” blurted out the Wizard Morby Jones. She had a good face for blurting: a wide, expressive mouth with enough room to twist in disbelief, confusion, and a smidge of (just barely-hidden) delight.
“Really,” said Herbie the Magnificent, his hairy-caterpillar brows beetling in wormlike undulations – a truly confusing mashup of invertebrates.
“Like, you mean it?”
Herbie threw the pickled jewelled mouseburger he was eating at the Wizard in a rage. “I have the ambition of TEN men!” he hooted in anger. “I meant it! A cost too dear implies there is a cost I am not willing to shoulder in pursuit of my desires! Fuck you! Ask me that again and I’ll be even MORE upset!”
“Alright,” said Morby. “How do you feel about the delvers?”
“Pernicious ticks that live under rocks and think themselves better than me,” said Herbie the Magnificent. “They don’t deserve their holds.”
“You like the holds?”
“Oh yes. EVERYONE thinks themselves better than me, that’s why they’ve all got to pay. But the holds are nice. I enjoy big rocks.”
“Excellent,” said Morby. “I can do this.”
And so the Wizard Morby Jones locked herself in her ritual chamber with antique tomes and ancient scrolls and creaking texts and threw them all out her window, cracked her knuckles, and got down to some really rough-and-ready thaumaturgy. By the time she was done her hands were shaking, her arms were noodles, and her legs were overboiled chickens, but she kept a bottle of Jorge’s Wondrous Alchemee at hand to solve side-effects like that and after a fortifying gulp her elbows were no longer made of macaroni, and she was able to stagger forth from her chambers and tell the eagerly-awaiting Herbie the Magnificent the words: “it is done.”
“Already?”
“Yeah.”
“Not fast enough, terrible, awful, bad job,” he said reflexively. “I won’t be paying you.”
“I already took my payment,” said Morby.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Wow. It must not have been that important or I’d have noticed. Alright, show me.”
So the Wizard Morby Jones led Herbie the Magnificent to the balcony of his coast-side estate, and pointed out with her finger the nearest of the mountains looming farther inland, and with her other hand she proffered a silver telescope, and with that telescope Herbie the Magnificent saw a crag jutting from its side – just slightly – that was no crag at all, but perfectly-shaped stone.
“I used my powers to bargain with a legion of delvers,” she told him. “They toiled all night under my enchantments and have built you a great delve-hold fit for any who finds a fort fine.”
“Fantastic, amazing, super,” said Herbie the Magnificent, throwing the silver telescope over the balcony like a used tissue. “I’m moving in tonight. Get everyone and everything packed up, we’re leaving in ten.”
***
And so Herbie the Magnificent led a great (if hurried) caravan of all his possessions and wealth from his coast-side estate to the newly delved hold sunk deep into the mountainside, and he was pleased indeed with what he found there. Halls carved from ravines that stretched so high you could almost imagine the sky loomed overhead. Walls sheer as a cliff-face, seamless as a magician’s purse, harder than dragonscale. Doors that would only open at the sight of his face; vaults that would disgorge their contents only at his touch; dungeons that would never open but at his sufferance. A gilded throneroom that would make an emperor weep; a peaktop observatory that could part the clouds and give vision to consume an eagle with jealousy; a tiny chamber underneath the very root of the mountain, embedded in the craton’s core, holding a giant lever surrounded with runes.
“What do those say?” demanded Herbie the Magnificent.
“‘Dignified Extinguishing of the Crown,’” said Morby. “‘Use When All Else Is As Dust And Ashe And No Other Choice Is To Be Made.’ It’s for emergencies.”
“Only suckers care about those,” said Herbie the Magnificent. “I’m bored and I’m pulling it now.”
And he did, and to his credit, he ran fast enough to make it out of the great front doors before the magma claimed them. There he met the Wizard Morby Jones, who was a little less out of breath than he was.
“Your stupid delve-hold was garbage,” he complained to her, bent double and wheezing through his knees. “I want a refund.”
“That’s impossible,” said Morby, lying on her back in the mountain meadow and watching the shimmering heat of the molten stone as it took the fortress and all its treasures beneath the earth to dwell in incandescent glory. “But I can build you another one.”
“A better one. This one was garbage. I don’t like rocks or delvers – never have. I can afford a second one easily. I’ll pay anything.”
“Wonderful,” said Morby. “What would you like this time?”
“Something by the sea again. My old mansion was way nicer than this dump.”
“Wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful.” Morby Jones stood upright and shook her arms in her sleeves, once again every inch the Wizard. “I’ll get started.”
“One thing first. Back there, how come you started running before I finished my sentence?”
“Common sense. I’ve got enough of it for both of us.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing at all, nothing at all.”
***
That night, the Wizard Morby Jones chanted the Undulations of the Deep. She Repelled the Kelp and Incanted the Magnesium and Summoned the Currents and even – briefly – Bent the Thaumocline, and when dawn reached her she hadn’t blinked in twelve hours and smelled like an old fish wrapped in a used gym sock.
“Done,” she croaked. “Gimme water.”
“I don’t owe you a thing,” said Herbie the Magnificent, lounging sulkily in his luxurious weregoose-down sleeping-back.
“I already took payment for this.”
“Well that’s nice but then I DOUBLE don’t owe you a thing. Get your own water.”
“Fine,” creaked Morby. “Job’s done.”
“Wake up everyone, let’s get going, leave the weak and indolent behind, here we go,” said Herbie the Magnificent, springing up like a jack-in-the-box. “Where is it?”
Morby pointed a single shaking finger. “There.”
“Where? By the island?”
“It IS the island.”
“Great, I knew that. Hurry up or get left behind.”
***
It took sixteen hours to make the long march down to the coast with all of the remaining wealth and treasure of Herbie the Magnificent (mostly things that hadn’t yet been moved into the delve-hold when it melted).
It took four more hours to secure transport grand enough to deliver them all across the waves, and four again to load them up.
Two hours of watching the grand, ephemeral pillar of spray and salt and foam draw nearer, loom larger, and larger, and larger.
A full hour of climbing its misted towers; marvelling over the living tides that formed its walls; witnessing the wonders of the deep in its nested chambers that hung out over the abyss; testing the unending strength of its giant mafic anchor that kept it affixed above the lode in the oceanic crust from whence it had spawned; speaking to the genteel fish that swarmed through the structure of the building and gave directions; breathing in the air that tasted of the freshest sea while somehow never getting damp and feeling lighter than the thinnest bubble.
Six seconds for Herbie the Magnificent to enter the room with the gargantuan pressure-valve, read the sign saying “TOUCHE NOTTE UNLESS YE SEEKE THE EMBRACE ETERNALLE OF YE DEEPES,” and yank hard on it.
***
“I think I know the problem,” said Herbie the Magnificent, sitting on the shoreline and watching the distant dissolution of the sea-towers back into wave and fancy while around him his remaining staff desperately performed artificial respiration on each other and surreptitiously pocketed trinkets from the flotsam of the beach.
“Oh?” asked the Wizard Morby Jones quickly, hands falling to something in her pockets.
“Yes,” said Herbie. “It’s that you keep making these stupid things in places where they can fall apart and sink.”
“Oh,” relaxed Morby.
“So you should put the next one in the sky. I’m having a nap now, have it ready when I’m done. And be quick about it – why are you wasting your time standing around being jumpy?”
“Pattern recognition.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Yes,” said the Wizard Morby Jones with a big fond smile. “You wouldn’t have.”
***
Herbie the Magnificent’s nap lasted nine hours, and during those nine hours the Wizard Morby Jones made nine promises to nine different demons of the air, each of which vowed to thwart the power and force of all of the others to the best of their abilities in a specific location, thereby creating a vortex of wind that would levitate any material placed within it and permitting the rapid assembly of a castle upon a cloudhead. The building itself was made of unshatterable glass tempered by the breath of a passing dragon, who had contributed her flames when she couldn’t stop laughing after Morby explained her request.
It dangled in the cool black air of the dark before dawn, impossible and existent, perfect and maddening, a dream that made reality a little less real by its presence.
“Wow, amazing,” said Herbie the Magnificent. “But it could be taller. I’m not paying you.”
“I already took my payment,” said Morby.
“Was it a lot or a little?” asked Herbie the Magnificent suspiciously.
“A lot,” said Morby blandly. “A huge amount. Immense. Heaps.”
“Is that more than a little? By how much?”
“Yes. A ton.”
“Huh!” said Herbie the Magnificent confidently with his brow furrowed in the manner of someone very concerned over appearing very unconcerned about how much he just heard that he didn’t understand in the slightest.
“And speaking of tons, there’s a strict weight requirement for this one. Don’t overload more than one hundred tons of weight in any forty-degree segment of the tower relative to its peers, or the balance of hatred that keeps it floating will drift off-center and topple it.”
“How the hell is anyone meant to keep track of all that?” demanded Herbie, eyes squinted angrily to conceal the genuine bemusement filling them. “There’s too many number things in them!”
“Basic math skills.”
“What with the what now?”
“Nothing you’ll miss. Goodbye forever, Herbie the Magnificent.”
“Sure whatever,” said Herbie the Magnificent. “Put everything in the east wing!” he hollered to his (few, resigned) servants. “I wanna see that sunrise.”
And so – two hours later – he did.
Briefly. At high velocity.
***
There were many questions after that, and all of them went unanswered because the only person who had answers was Morby Jones and she wasn’t talking. She may not have had the ambition of ten men, but thanks to services rendered she had the common sense, pattern recognition, and basic math skills of two; and that, a modest portfolio, and a bungalow were enough to make her happy for a long, long time.
Well.
That, and she started calling herself ‘Wizard Morby Jones the Magnificent,’ for the same reason someone might mount the antlers of an elk they killed over the fireplace. But only privately, in her head.
She had too much common sense to do otherwise.