Conundrum

by Jeff Crook

  Razmous peered over the side and into the pit. “Yes, but who built it, and for what? You don’t suppose there is anything down there in that dark, fearsome-looking hole, do you?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out,” Conundrum declared.

  “But what if it is some sort of horrible monster that fell in long ages ago and has been down there ever since, languishing in the dark, unable to escape, with hunger ever gnawing at its reason? Poor blighter. I almost feel sorry for it, don’t you?”

  “Not particularly! I’d rather go back to the ship and get help,” Conundrum said. “We’ve got to rescue Sir Grumdish and Doctor Bothy somehow-assuming they need rescuing. "

  Searching the floor and walls of the slide for cracks and fingerholds, Conundrum started up the slide. With a sigh of disappointment, Razmous followed.

  The stones were mossgrown and slimy, and the slope steep and treacherous. Before they had gone very far, even the nimble kender found himself unable to progress farther without climbing aids of some sort, and without the glow of the worms, the passage was dark as a goblin den. He brushed back a few loose topknot hairs with one begrimed hand, then stepped back and glanced up the slope. High above, at what distance he could not begin to guess, he thought he saw a light like a star winking. He blinked, but then it was gone.

  “We’re stuck,” Razmous sighed. “There’s no way out, not unless you can invent something.”

  “What do you mean?” Conundrum asked.

  Razmous shrugged. “You’re the gnome! I thought you might invent some machine to get us out of here.”

  “I can’t make machines out of air. I can’t even see in this…” his words trailed off, then he muttered, “Machines made of air? Hmmm.”

  “Shhh!” the kender hissed like a broken steam pipe. “I hear voices!”

  “What are they telling you to do?” Conundrum asked, suddenly filled with concern.

  The kender slapped him in the dark. “Not that kind! Real voices. Listen!”

  They held their breaths and listened with straining ears. Conundrum pressed his ear to the wall. At first, there was nothing, but then he heard, muffled at first by unguessable thicknesses of stone and earth, now growing more distinct as they approached closer, two voices as alike as the chirping of two crickets. Or it might have been one voice carrying on a conversation with itself.

  “I tell you I heard a noise, and the beetlespriggins reported that the hole has opened and the glowworms were red,” said one. “That can only mean something is in the trap.”

  “Beetlespriggins! I’d sooner trust our own mother than trust beetlespriggins. You’re dreaming!” the other admonished. “Let’s go back and watch them torture the prisoners.”

  Conundrum’s breath caught in his throat. Razmous clapped a hand over his mouth.

  Suddenly, a tiny door appeared in the wall almost between Conundrum’s feet. Out popped a creature about the size of a beaver, only it was covered from head to head with short bristling spines, like a hedgehog. Razmous checked again. It was true-covered head to head with spines. The creature had an identical spine-bristled head at either end, so that he couldn’t tell if it was coming or going. A warm yellow glow spilled around it, apparently from some tiny torch or glowglobe hidden within the secret passage.

  It crept out between Conundrum’s legs, seemingly without noticing them, and peered with its leading head down the pit.

  “There. It’s like I said. The worms are blue. There’s nothing in the pit, or if it is, then it’s dead!” the first head cackled.

  “Good! I’m hungry,” the rearward head said.

  “Nar! It’ll wait. I wants to watch the interrogation. Back us up, now.”

  “But what if it’s a troll?” the second head argued. “Hole won’t hold trolls.”

  " 'Tweren’t no troll,” the first head said. “You’d of known if it was a troll. Here, if you won’t back us up, turn round and let me go first, then.”

  “I can do it. You’re always wanting to go first. I get tired of being backwards.” Without turning, the creature started back into the hole.

  Suddenly, the now-rearward head-formerly the leading head-hissed, “Don’t look now, Bern, but it is something.”

  The creature stopped, half in and half out of its hole.

  “What is it, Stang?” the forward head asked with a trembling voice.

  “Some kind of… of… dwarf! And a long-haired elf, I think,” the rearward head answered. Its voice then sank to a whisper. “And what’s more, the dwarf is standing right above us!”

  “I’m not an elf, I’m a kender,” Razmous declared, extending his small, slime-smeared hand. “And this is a gnome!”

  “Run, Bern!” the rearward head screeched, its tiny ratlike eyes opening wide in fear at the kender’s reaching paw.

  “You run, too, Stang!” the forward head shouted, while all four of its tiny legs began to spin, claws scrabbling on the slick stones.

  “There’s no need to run. I won’t hurt you,” Razmous said, reaching down and catching the creature by one of its legs before it could get away, “very much.”

  He lifted it off the ground, but the strange little creature responded by rolling itself up into a small, spiky ball. The spines dug painfully into Razmous’s knuckles, and he dropped it.

  The creature bounced once, twice, three times and then it was gone, rolling away at a tremendous speed toward the gaping, sword-rimmed pit. Conundrum made a grab to try to save it, but got a jab in the meaty part of his thumb for his efforts, and nearly lost his balance. Razmous caught him by the collar to steady him, then went back to sucking his own throbbing, stinging fingers. They heard a sharp double cry, followed by a small, muffled thud.

  They looked down at the small door, which still stood open, spilling out a small trapezoid of yellow light. Razmous knelt and peered into it.

  “Do you think…?” Conundrum asked.

  Nodding, Razmous said, “Doctor Bothy is much too fat to make this squeeze. So we’ll have to find another way out, once we rescue them.”

  13

  Several dozen small stinging flies buzzed round Doctor Bothy’s head, laughing at him with their tiny, buzzing voices. He blinked awake, squinting into a bright light. After a few moments he realized that the light was only a candle, but it was blinding compared to the darkness of the previous hour.

  However, the candle was quite plainly hanging upside down from the ceiling, its flame pointed straight at the ground in blatant defiance of every law of nature. He blinked again, trying to shake the hair out of his face, then he remembered he was bald. The hair was his beard. With that realization, the full horror of his situation rushed at him like a starved gully dwarf, yellow teeth flashing.

  It was he who was upside down, bound with hundreds of blackberry vines and dangling by a rope looped over a particularly thick tree root in the ceiling. Dancing round him in the air were several dozen small, naked, fantastically-painted and gossamer-winged beings that seemed right out of a child’s picture album, except that many wore hideous masks carved out of acorn caps and the half-shells of walnuts and pecans. Others brandished tiny, needle-tipped spears from which depended a variety of shrew skulls, hummingbird feathers, dusty gray mouse scalps, and other diminutive-yet-no-less-horrific trophies. Every once in a while, one of the fierce little creatures would fly closer and prod him with the butt of its spear, an action which reminded him all too vividly of a cook testing the doneness of his roast. He glanced up-no, he reminded himself, down-and to his relief saw not a cooking fire smoldering beneath him, but a single yellow candle affixed to the floor in its own pool of hardened wax.

  Then again, maybe these tiny creatures were used to cooking their meals over the flame of a candle, he thought with a shudder. He wondered how long it would take him to cook by candle.

  “Stop that!” someone shouted.

  Doctor Bothy craned his head round and discovered that Sir Grumdish hung nearby, similarly trussed and dangling o
ver a single green candle. He angrily spat his beard from his mouth. This seemed to amuse the creatures to no end. They buzzed merrily around the small, stuffy underground chamber, squeaking, “Monkey talk! Monkey talk! Listen monkey talk!”

  “I am not a monkey!” Sir Grumdish spat. Every time he opened his mouth, his beard fell into it.

  One of the creatures swooped close and hovered a few inches from the tip of Sir Grumdish’s nose, its wings a blur. It gathered up a fistful of the gnome’s white beard. “Hair… face… monkey!” it cried with glee, then gave Sir Grumdish’s beard a sharp tug. Sir Grumdish bellowed in pain and tried to twist his head away, which only set him to swinging in crazy circles.

  “Why are you doing this?” Doctor Bothy asked.

  “This is your fault, Bothy!” Sir Grumdish howled. “I hold you to be responsible. I should have let you eat that whole cottage.”

  “Please be quiet, Grumdish!” the doctor shouted. “I am trying to establish polite communication.”

  “How do you propose to accomplish this miracle?” Sir Grumdish mocked.

  The tiny creatures now concentrated on the doctor, buzzing all around his head. They took turns thwacking him on the thighs and belly with their small spear-staves, giggling uproariously at the way the blows rippled across the expanse of his dangling portliness, like waves in a pond. “Cry fat monkey! Fat monkey cry!”

  “This is intolerable!” the doctor wailed.

  Suddenly, the tiny creatures let off and flew away to the corners of the chamber to hide amongst the roots dangling from the roof or sprouting from the walls. Doctor Bothy tried to turn his head to see what had startled them. Grumdish slowly twirled at the end of his entangling vines, first one way, then the other.

  The only thing unusual they saw was a small door in the center of one wall. It was set into an arched frame of rough unmorticed stones. Through the cracks in this door, they noticed a bright white light shining, but a shadow came before it, walking with a slow, purposeful gait toward the door. They also noticed a peculiar scrape-thumping noise, repeated at regular intervals, like a shutter tossed against the side of a house in a storm. As the shadow behind the door grew larger, the odd noise grew louder, until it seemed to be just outside the room. Then, ominously, it stopped. A nervous titter rippled through the room’s occupants, gnomish and otherwise.

  The door creaked open, spilling the light brightly across the floor. A cold gust of wind snuffed out the two candles, casting the chamber into startling contrasts of light and shadow. The roots hanging down from the roof took on a horrific aspect, as though they might writhe suddenly to life and reach out to grip and choke the helpless gnomes. The two gnomes cried out in terror, their eyes starting from their heads at the thing that lurked in the open doorway.

  Its shadow stretched across the length of the floor and loomed up the further wall. Most like a bear it seemed, standing on its hind legs, but it had a tiny head sunk down between its shoulders, and no neck at all. What was more, it had only one leg. The other was a wooden peg.

  As it entered the chamber stump-clumping on its wooden leg, it seemed to diminish in size, if not fearsomeness. They perceived that it was not a bear but a largish badger, but this failed to bring them much comfort, for what difference is it whether a bear or a badger enters your room stumping along on a wooden peg? It seemed to walk with something of a swagger, exaggerated by its false leg, and it carried a small, twisted twig or stick tucked military-fashion under one arm-or foreleg-like a riding crop. It was from the nether tip of this curious wand that the brilliant white light emanated.

  The badger strode a few paces into the chamber before stopping and gazing up with hate-filled eyes at the two dangling gnomes. The door, seemingly of its own accord, swung shut and thudded in its frame. The badger then flipped the stick-which was a wand-out from under its arm and stood it on the floor before him, like a staff of office, his small, clawed fists gripping it fiercely. The glow at its tip softened and dimmed until it was no brighter than the flame of a single candle.

  “Who are these miserable creatures?” the badger snarled.

  “My name is Doctor Bothy,” the doctor gasped after he had got over his astonishment. “And this is Sir Grumdish, a knight of renown.”

  The badger thumped his staff/wand on the ground three times, which had the effect of starting a spume of sparks from its glowing end. The sparks fell about him like a shower, and where they settled, they seemed to cling together in a discernible shape or pattern. In moments, they had formed a large chair or throne, which continued to glow and throb with its own light. The badger eased his furry bulk into this amazing piece of furniture.

  “Say, you wouldn’t mind lending me your wand, once this is cleared up and we are released?” Bothy said. “I know some folks who’d like to study it for a day or so.”

  The badger shouted, “Silence!”

  His small but powerful voice tolled like a bell, resounding through the small underground chamber, and Doctor Bothy found that his tongue was suddenly stuck to the roof of his mouth, as though he had been eating hot marshmallows.

  “What did we do to deserve this?” Sir Grumdish asked angrily.

  “You did criminally bury your nasty haggis in my forest,” the badger said.

  “Your forest?”

  “My forest!” the one-legged badger growled. “I am Grim Alderwand, king of this place. This very night by light of the ugly new moon, you fouled my forest with your nasty sheepses’ stomachs. What vine did you hope to sprout from such a seed?”

  Before either astonished gnome could answer, the creature continued, speaking now to no one, or perhaps to everyone. He lifted his small black eyes to the roof and raised his hands as though invoking heaven. “These nasty monkeys is always stinking up my forest with their rubbishes. We are the burrowers, the diggers under the roots. We finds all these things that they be trying to be hiding here, their garbages and their fish heads and their nasty sheepses’ offals. They are worse than trolls, for trolls eat everthings: bones, scales, prickles and all. But these mens, these humans…”

  “But we are not humans. We are gnomes!” Sir Grumdish argued.

  “And a kender,” Doctor Bothy mumbled, finally freeing his tongue from its magical confines.

  “Did you not this very night dig holes in our forest for to hide your nasty haggises?” the badger king asked.

  “It was horrible! We couldn’t eat it, or at least some of us couldn’t,” Sir Grumdish said, glancing sharply at the doctor. “We had no other choice!”

  “Yes, we didn’t wish to be impolite to our hosts, and we certainly couldn’t keep the haggis onboard our ship,” Doctor Bothy said. “We have a long sea voyage ahead of us, and we don’t want to attract sharks.”

  “Yet you are impolite to us, most impolite indeed, I must say,” the king said, looking round. The shadows in the corners shifted and hummed with the winged creatures hiding there. “You does not want to take the sheepses offals into your houses, so you come here and bury it in ours.”

  “But we didn’t know you were here,” Sir Grumdish said.

  “That is because monkeys, so high up their trees, never looks down to see whose head it is upon which they are peeing,” the king said, waving his wand over his head like a director’s baton. “When you monkeys come round our homes burying your haggises and fish heads, you do not think of these trolls that your nasty things attract. And when these trolls come rooting round our houses for sheep stomachses that you are burying, which they can smell from miles away I can tell you by golly, they do not care if they accidentally eat themselves a hedgehog or a badger or whatnot!”

  “We meant no offense,” Doctor Bothy said.

  “Yet offense you have given,” the king countered.

  “How can we make amends?” the doctor asked. “Truly, for we gnomes are sympathetic to your plight. You call us monkeys and confuse us with humans, but we are smaller than humans and are ever their subjects.”

  “Even now, human
s rule our home mountain in the name of an evil dragon,” Sir Grumdish added.

  “They do not take us very seriously,” Doctor Bothy continued, “and then only when something goes wrong or explodes.”

  “That all sounds very terrible,” the king sympathized. “Very terrible indeed. Yet it does not excuse you to come burying your haggis in our roofs to attract these trolls hereabouts to come and eat us up. If these things that you are telling me are true, then you should have been even more thoughtful than these other monkeys who live in the villages.”

  “What are you going to do with us?” Sir Grumdish asked worriedly.

  “We will take you up to the forest again,” the king said.

  Sir Grumdish sighed in relief. Doctor Bothy said, “Good. Because I didn’t want to complain, but all the blood has gone to my head, hanging upside down this way.”

  “Yes, you will be taken to the forest,” the badger king continued, smiling in a snarly sort of way, baring his short but wicked fangs, “and there you will be hung from the tree under which you buried your nasty haggis. Then, when the trolls come sniffing round, they can eat you, rather than our small burrowing selveses.”

  “I told you we went the wrong way,” Conundrum said. He and Razmous stood at the mouth of a dark forest cave, looking out at the stars peeping through treetops.

  “I went down,” Razmous said as he stood there scratching his head. “Everybody knows that when you are in a dungeon, you go down to find its secret chambers, not up. Up is for haunted castles and ruined towers. Down is for dungeons.”

  “Well, down brought us to the entrance, seemingly,” Conundrum said. “Or perhaps it is an exit. I don’t see any guards.”

  “There’s only one thing to be done. We must go back,” Razmous said, with not a little enthusiasm. “Sometimes getting lost isn’t such a bad thing, you know. I’ve been lost many times, and I’ve often had a better time than when I knew where I was going.”

  He turned and led the way back into the dark depths of the cave. They felt their way along the wall until they found the small entrance through which they’d come. The kender ducked down to enter it, then froze, a hiss whistling through his teeth.