Conundrum

by Jeff Crook

  The Indestructible had come to rest half out of the water, thrown up on a sandy beach at the edge of the small cavern. Most of the ship’s glowwormglobes were broken in the crash. The ship listed about twenty degrees to port and lay at a rather severe angle to fore. The water she had taken on after the dragon attack had all rushed to the stern, completely flooding the engine room.

  Chief Portlost, wet and bedraggled, clambered up from below. A little reddish light, shining in patches through the muck-caked bridge porthole, illuminated his wan features as he squeezed water from his beard and shivered.

  “It’s no use, Commodore,” he reported. “Engine room is filled to the door with mud and water. We need to pump her out and patch her up before we can hope to float her again, provided we can unbeach ourselves. Meanwhile, there’s no telling what’s happened to the engines. Drive-shaft probably bent; flowpellar blades snapped. And we haven’t enough scrap iron on board to make even minimal repairs.”

  “I see,” the commodore said, thoughtfully stroking his own wet beard. “How long, do you think?”

  “With plenty of iron and a full crew, I’d say a week,” the chief answered after a few moments” consideration.

  “Then you’ll need at least two weeks, provided we can find you the iron. Our first order of business is to see to our provisions. I heard cargo break loose, and I imagine most of our stores are waterlogged and useless. We’ll need to load the UAEPs-with arrows this time,” he said with a wry smile, “and make everything ready should the dragon appear. Once that is done, we can set to pumping out the ship, repairing what we can, and prospecting for some iron in the cave. The Khalkist Mountains are supposed to be filled with ore-or so say the dwarves. In any case, I suggest we take a look around. If we are still in the dragon’s lair, we’ll need to find someplace safe to hide. Sir Grumdish, bring out your armor.”

  “Yes, sir!” Sir Grumdish responded happily.

  “And open the weapons locker. Daggers and crossbows all around.”

  26

  With the aid of Conundrum, Razmous, and the professor, Sir Grumdish dragged his mechanical Solamnic armor out of the ship. Upon their exit from the Indestructible, the gnomes were at first awestruck by what they saw. The cavern was enormous. The beach upon which they had landed was but one lonely spot at the edge of a vast and magnificent ruin.

  As they assembled Sir Grumdish’s armor on the sandy shore, they stared in awe at the towering ruins of a great city, one lost to time. It was built on a gargantuan scale, many times larger than dwarf or human cities. Columns twice the girth of the Indestructible marched right down to the water’s edge, and edifices of epic proportions and ancient style had been cut out of the rock walls of the caves. Broad avenues of cracked paving stones stretched into the distance, lined along either side by bubbling pits of boiling mud, scalding geysers, and crackling pools of lava-the source of the dim red light filling the cavern like a dawning sun.

  But the place was hollow and empty, dead, with only the hiss and pop of the steaming mud to break the silence of the deep earth. It seemed many years since anyone lived here, for the place was undoubtedly a ruin, the civilization that built it long ago fallen into forgetful barbarism before finally succumbing altogether to its fate. The gnomes did not care to speculate on who the original builders were, whether human or sea elves or creatures unguessed at, forgotten by time. The solidity of the construction hinted at the skill of dwarf masons, but if this city were an ancient realm of the dwarves, they were a race with a sense of grandeur unmatched by any dwarves of the modern days.

  “Why do you suppose they needed such big doors?” Razmous asked while staring around in wonder, no longer even pretending to help the others assemble Sir Grumdish’s armor.

  “There’s no accounting for dwarves,” the professor commented as he cupped his hands to accept Sir Grumdish’s foot. Together, he and Conundrum lifted the gnome into the legs of his mechanical armor. Once he was settled safely inside, they hoisted his top half and set it down over his head. They heard him ratcheting home the retaining bolts.

  While they were doing this, the remainder of the crew disembarked and spread out along the sandy shore, staring in fear and wonder at the monumental architecture stretching off into the red haze of distance. Even Doctor Bothy had been dragged away from his research. He staggered down the sagging gangplank, his expansive, blue jumpsuited midriff convulsing with regular spasms, each one of which he dutifully recorded in a handy pocket medical diary that he continually misplaced between hiccoughs. Sir Tanar stood on the shore, staring at the Indestructible lying in the sand with her stern in the water.

  Chief Portlost came down the gangplank last, bearing the keys to the ship-a massive bronze crank, nearly as tall as himself, which was used to wind the main drive spring. He had retrieved it from the flooded engine room, nearly drowning in the effort.

  With a few preliminary rattles, pings, and clangs, Sir Grumdish’s armor whirred to life. Conundrum handed him his broad sword, which his mechanical gauntlet gripped clumsily. Lifting it aloft, he shouted, his voice muffled by his armor, “Follow me!”

  The shining steel blade, which like his armor he kept immaculately polished, glinted in the scarlet glow of a nearby lava pool. The others looked at him and shook their heads in disbelief. They were stifling in the heat of the cavern, so Sir Grumdish must surely have been baking in his armor.

  But he did not complain. Instead, he led off in a clanking stride, sword still held high over his head like a standard. Commodore Brigg tucked a dagger into his belt and then followed, the others falling in behind him, each checking his weapon. The professor carried his last UANP-Underwater Arrow of Normal Proportions-over one shoulder, while Razmous tested the willowy flex of his hoopak. Satisfied of its soundness, the kender pulled from one his pouches Commodore Brigg’s remarkable all-purpose-thousand-in-one-uses-folding-knife, which he still hadn’t given back after the adventure of the haggis burial party, and continued his search through its many useful tools for an actual knife blade. Sir Tanar glared hungrily about, perhaps imagining the untold riches that might still lie buried in some hidden vault, forgotten by time.

  Conundrum hefted the crossbow given him by Chief Portlost. He had, of course, fired a crossbow before. The crossbow was as much the birthright of every gnome as the long bow was for the elves. The crossbow, in all its varieties, was the one truly mechanical weapon, an ingenious design invented by dwarves, much to the shame of gnomes everywhere. Sure, over the centuries, the gnomes had introduced numerous improvements, like the crossbow that fired a weighted net rather than a normal bolt, and the self-propelled all-terrain crossbow and recreational vehicle. The one in Conundrum’s hands was one of the light crossbow variety, with the standard issue apple peeler and vegetable juicer ingeniously stowed in the wooden stock of the weapon.

  Conundrum settled his weapon into the crook of his arm and plodded after the others. Unlike his fellows, this cavernous place filled him with foreboding. Not the unreasoning terror he had experienced when the dragon soared over and glared down at him with its hateful red eyes. Instead, he seemed to feel eyes watching him. In his fancy he imagined that the spirits of the builders of this place were staring down at them as they crawled like ants along the broad and broken avenues. This place reeked of some ancient tragedy, as well as more recent violence. Here and there, he saw fire-blackened walls and piles of charred bones, pillars of stone with huge sword gashes marring their stark marble beauty, gigantic doors of granite, each large enough to serve as the banquet table of kings, thrown down and shattered like cheap crockery. At one point, the avenue was blocked by a massive pillar that had fallen from the facade of a nearby building. In several places, it had broken apart, and it was through one of these gaps, as tall and wide as the grandest hall of Mount Nevermind, that they passed, every one of them nearly overcome with awe.

  After what seemed like miles, Sir Grumdish came to a halt at the edge of a vast, stone-paved plaza surrounded on all sides by
buildings that towered into the darkness overhead. At the far side of the plaza, they saw a fountain as large as the lake filling the crater peak of Mount Nevermind. In its midst, a column of shimmering golden water rose a hundred feet in the air before splashing down with a noise like a mighty waterfall.

  Sir Grumdish said within his armor, “I don’t think the dragon is here. We’d have been attacked by now.” He clumsily sheathed his broad sword, then opened a little hatch in the belly of the armor and took a gasp of warm, moist outside air. “We might shelter in one of these buildings.”

  “I’ll not spungh-” Doctor Bothy hiccoughed-“spend a single night any where nnnungh-near here. I couldn’t sleep in ungh-anything so huge.”

  “Maybe there are smaller buildings off one of the side avenues,” Conundrum suggested.

  “Let’s not split up just yet. First let’s check out that fountain. We need fresh water badly, especially if we are to spend much time here,” the commodore said, mopping his sweating brow with a handkerchief. “Our supplies were ruined in the crash.”

  Closing the belly hatch of his armor, Sir Grumdish started ahead. He led them across the broad paved plaza, over stone littered with broken piles of rubble and large, fire-blackened boulders. The golden color of the fountain’s water came from four flames, each burning from the top of a slender stalagmite that rose from the pool’s depths. From the center of the pool, the water shot in a thick stream high into the air, filling the area around it with a fine cool spray that proved a welcome relief to the heat. At the first hint of such blessed coolness, the crew threw caution to the wind and hurried ahead, passing Sir Grumdish and leaving him clanking along in a stiff-legged stagger.

  The water in the fountain proved to be as cool and sweet as elven wine compared to the stale stuff out of their ship’s stores. Some of the more reckless crew members dove headfirst into the waters, the most vocal and frolicking among them being, of course, Razmous Pinchpocket. With a shrill scream of delight, he leaped in, performing a perfect catapult stone splash while still wearing his pouches. The others knelt on the low stone curb and splashed the refreshing stuff in their faces and over their heads, cupping their hands to drink deeply or lying with their beards streaming in the water. Sir Tanar leaned over the curb and plunged his whole head into the water.

  Sir Grumdish arrived last and latest, his top half already swaying as he loosened the restraining bolts. Razmous, floating on his back near the fountain’s curb, playfully sent a thin stream of water arcing from his pursed lips high into the air. “Look at me,” he laughed. “I’m a fountain.”

  “I’ll fountain you!” Sir Grumdish howled. “Help me out of here, somebody!”

  “Shhh!” Razmous cautioned, sitting up. His wet topknot hung over his eyes like a pony’s mane. “Be quiet.”

  The others, having learned long ago of the kender’s extraordinary hearing, paused in their cavorting, straining their ears to hear over the roaring of the fountain.

  A horrible metallic grinding noise, like an old rusty gate, three hundred feet tall and weighing a couple thousand tons, swinging open, set their teeth on edge. The ground shook with heavy footsteps. As they watched in horror, a huge green crab, half as big as the Indestructible, lurched from the entrance of a nearby building and scuttled toward them, pinchers clanging together like shields. It crossed the distance to the fountain in three rapid heartbeats, closing on the nearest of the crew-Sir Grumdish, madly retightening the restraining bolts of his armor-before the others could react.

  The thing scrabbled to a stop within pinching distance of the hapless armored warrior, then rose up threateningly on its two rearmost legs, performed a not-too-ungraceful pirouette, and fell over on its back with a resounding clang, its legs and pinchers waving helplessly in the air.

  27

  Gradually, the thrashing legs grew weaker and weaker until at last they were still, with only an occasional twitch to warn the gnomes from approaching too closely. Not that any of them would have approached too closely-not at first anyway. But Doctor Bothy and Professor Hap-Troggensbottle had to sit on Razmous to keep him away from the huge, black creature.

  “It looks dead!” he wailed. “What’s the danger in just a little peek?”

  “That’s what you said about the dragon’s egg, and look what happened there!” Sir Grumdish barked from inside his armor.

  “I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

  Meanwhile, with dagger drawn, Commodore Brigg crept near enough to touch the beast’s shell with his outstretched hand. He brushed his fingertips over the rough, pitted surface of one of the creature’s legs, then leaped away, but the beast remained as still as the dead. “It doesn’t feel like a crab shell,” he whispered as he examined the tips of his fingers. “Hello! Is this rust?”

  As if in answer, a door in the upturned belly of the beast clanged open, and out from it crawled a bedraggled figure dressed in rags. Long, unkept strands of white hair sprouted in a halo around his enormous bald brown head, and a long, thick, filthy beard dangled to his knees. Taking no notice of the astonished crew of the Indestructible, he began to curse and stomp around on the crab’s belly, waving a wrench at the still-twitching legs.

  With a little cry of surprised joy, Commodore Brigg leaped onto the crab’s belly. The diminutive figure stopped waving his wrench and eyed the commodore warily. The two stared eye to eye for a few moments. As the light of recognition slowly kindled in the wretched creature’s eyes, his bearded lip trembled, and he dropped his wrench with a clink.

  Then the two were in each other’s arm, weeping and roaring like drunken dwarves who just won some money, pummeling each other on the back and madly tugging at their beards.

  “Hawser, you old sea dog!” the commodore cried.

  “Brigg, you old barnacle scraper!” the bedraggled gnome answered.

  Slowly, the others gathered nearer, still cautious of the strange crab-creature, but their curiosity of it and its peculiar owner gradually got the better of them. Tanar rose up from the water and stared at the crab in surprise. Razmous stood knee-deep in the pool and wrung out his topknot, a bemused smile on his wrinkled brown face. Sir Grumdish opened his belly visor and stared out suspiciously. Doctor Bothy shook with hiccoughs and chewed the ends of his beard.

  Conundrum approached the crab and examined its rusty surface. Spying something beneath the green patina covering its surface, he began to rub at it with the no longer white sleeve of his robe. After a few moments, he had removed enough of the thin verdigris to reveal letters painted in bright red: MNS POLY.

  “The Polywog!" he gasped.

  “What is left of it,” the bedraggled gnome croaked. “Forgive me. It has been some time since I last spoke. My voice is a little raw.”

  “Then you are-” the professor began.

  “Captain Hawser of the MNS Polywog,” the commodore said.

  “Last survivor of that ill-fated expedition,” Hawser added.

  “And my brother!” Commodore Brigg finished, fresh tears rolling down his bearded cheeks. “It was my Life Quest to find him.”

  Captain Hawser turned and gripped his long-lost sibling by the shoulders. “So how did you find me?” he cried.

  The commodore then described their journey from Sancrist, leaving out few details and commending with undisguised pride the bravery and resourcefulness of his crew. His narrative was helped along by various supportive exclamations, clarifications, and corrections by the kender and other members of the crew. When the commodore came to their indecision in the cavern as a result of some confusion over the maps, Captain Hawser nodded his head in appreciation of their predicament.

  “Aye, we had the same trouble, and that’s how we ended up here, if you know what I mean, which I am sure you do. It seems we misplaced that portion of the map before ever we reached Winston’s Tower, and therefore your cartographer must have made a copy of the incomplete copy of the incomplete original that we left there, if you know what I mean.”

  Nodding,
the commodore finished his narrative, telling of the encounter with the dragon, and their crash landing on the beach here. Once again, Captain Hawser sympathized. “Lucky you had them iron plates on your hull,” he said. “Polywog was covered in bronze and stood nary a chance against the claws of the dragon. We followed the same light as you did, being lost like yourselves, and the dragon was waiting for us, seemingly. She tore the ship to shreds, half my crew drowned, dead, or eaten. The survivors escaped to here.”

  “How?” the commodore asked. “Surely you didn’t make that swim through the flooded passages.”

  “Nay, no gnome could do such a thing without some kind of underwater breathing apparatus like that one invented by your professor there,” Hawser said, acknowledging Professor Hap-Troggensbottle. “But you forget we had a dwarf with us-old Brambull. He found a passage linking the city of the giants with Charynsanth’s lair. Of course, the giants had blocked it up to keep the dragon out of their city, but we managed to squeeze through the cracks.”

  At these words, Sir Tanar perked up. Noticing his interest, Conundrum edged closer to the Thorn Knight but said nothing to him as yet.

  “Giants?” the professor said in alarm. “You mean there are giants living here?”

  “Well, only just a few, if you know what I mean. Charynsanth got most of them before they blocked up that passage I told you about,” Captain Hawser explained.

  “Who is Charynsanth?” Sir Tanar asked.

  Captain Hawser’s eyes narrowed as he glared at the Thorn Knight. He shot a glance at his brother, as though seeking his approval before speaking. Commodore Brigg nodded, albeit reluctantly.

  “Charynsanth is the red dragon,” Hawser explained. “That’s her name, or at least that’s what the giants call her. I don’t know what her real name is, as I haven’t bothered to ask.”