Conundrum

by Jeff Crook

  Out on the beach, another of the catapults fired its load out to sea, forcing a pause. Commodore Brigg took this opportunity to resume the conversation.

  “We know of your life quest to discover why small rocks, and even big rocks, sink, while really big rocks like islands and continents float. We intend to subnavigate the continent of Ansalon,” said Commodore Brigg, “to complete the great voyage begun by the MNS Polywog, which nearly ended in disaster, some twenty-five years ago.”

  “It is ordered, by the Knights of Neraka,” Sir Wolhelm continued with a warning glance at the commodore, “that the legendary Sub-Ansalonian Passage between Mount Nevermind in the west and Winston’s Tower in the east be located and-”

  “The first attempt nearly ended in disaster,” Navigator Snork chimed in. “The MNS Polywog actually succeeded in completing the west-to-east leg of the journey. Fortunately, on the return leg, the ship was lost, and the crew has not been seen since. So this still leaves the east-to-west leg of the journey to complete the life quest. Chief Acquisitions Officer Razmous”-a slight bow from same-“is vital to the success of this mission, as he claims to be in possession of a copy of the map left at Winston’s Tower before the Polywog began its return voyage.”

  “Yes, I have it here somewhere,” the kender declared from under the table.

  “The kender has the long-lost map?” Sir Wolhelm exclaimed, forgetting that he had been interrupted again. He glared under the table, but the kender had vanished.

  “Yes, of course. And he is a most qualified cartographer,” Commodore Brigg asserted.

  “The gods help you,” the young Knight in the gray robes sighed.

  With a puzzled look at this remark, Commodore Brigg continued, “We intend to sail round the northern shore of Ansalon until we reach the Blood Sea of Istar. We’ll stop off in Flotsam to replenish our supplies-”

  “I have additions to those orders,” Sir Wolhelm inserted hastily, while still searching beneath the table for the kender. The young Gray Robe read from his tablet. “When you reach the city of Flotsam, you are ordered take on board the Thorn Knight, Sir Tanar Lobcrow, and extend him every courtesy.”

  The gnomes exchanged puzzled looks.

  “Whatever for?” the commodore exclaimed. “I have no need of a sorcerer. My crew list is already completed.”

  “You are so ordered, Brigg,” Sir Wolhelm said. “If you want the Knights of Neraka to finance this excursion of yours, as agreed, you must abide by our terms. We want one of our own on this voyage, but we’ll not needlessly risk the life of even one Knight until you have proved you can sail your ship from here to Flotsam.”

  “I assure you, Sir Wolhelm, the MNS Indestructible will reach Flotsam,” the commodore responded in insulted tones. “However, my ship is not built to accommodate individuals of your… your…” he paused, waving his hand vaguely toward the Knight Commander.

  “Stature,” Snork whispered.

  “Stature!” Commodore Brigg snapped. “Yes, that’s it. This is a gnome-built ship built for gnomes, and, well, the occasional kender. Your Knight will be most uncomfortable, rest assured. One might even say cramped. We’ve agreed to turn over all logs, maps, records and so forth, upon our successful return. That should be sufficient. I should think that would satisfy your… how shall we say?… curiosity about our venture.”

  The Knight’s face darkened, and the muscles along his jaw began to quiver. “There is no point in arguing. You have been ordered to take Sir Tanar aboard at Flotsam, and that is what you shall do. Sir Tanar will see that you do not accidentally get lost along the way and, for example, fall into the hands of any Knights of Solamnia.”

  “Very well,” the commodore sighed. Obviously flustered, he turned back to the professor. “As I was saying, we will put into port at Flotsam. From there, we sail to the center of the Blood Sea, dive to the bottom, and enter the chasm that once led to the Abyss. In the wall of this deep crevasse is an opening, a cave, from which the Polywog emerged all those years ago at the end of their legendary west-to-east journey. We should emerge in the New Sea somewhere near the Isle of Schallsea.”

  “Sounds impossible,” the professor said while gnawing thoughtfully on the pencil in his mouth.

  “Perhaps-but let me remind you that no one is going anywhere until these ordinance experiments are completed,” Sir Wolhelm said.

  The professor’s eyes narrowed beneath his shaggy white brows. “These maybe ordinance experiments to you Knights, but they are scientific experiments to me,” he snarled. “Need I remind you that my life quest is to unravel the mystery of buoyant stone? And these experiments, I tell you, are a complete failure!” He stabbed his pencil into the ream of wet schematics he had thrown onto the table upon first entering the tent. Then he drew the pencil from his beard, hurled it to the ground and stomped on it vehemently.

  “Every time we come up with a useful, time-saving device you military types twist our machines to your own evil uses!” he shouted while stomping around the tent. “Take the gnomeflinger, for instance, designed to transport gnomes to the various levels within the central shaft of Mount Nevermind. You use it to hurl rocks to batter down the walls of your enemies. Or the cheese-holer, an ingenious device designed to put the holes in cheese, yet you make it an instrument of torture! Science has ever been the pawn of the military!”

  Sir Wolhelm rose, his face scarlet with rage, hut fortunately whatever he was about to say was interrupted by the young Thorn Knight. “Come now, Professor. They haven’t been a complete waste of time. And there is still the last and greatest of your experiments-Big Bertrem.” He pointed out over the sands toward the catapult of truly monstrous proportions, requiring the pulley systems of three normal catapults just to draw, and a crew of well over two hundred gnomes. The stone currently being loaded onto it was easily large enough to knock a dragon out of the sky.

  “Well, hmm, true, I would like to see Big Bertrem fired, just once,” the professor said dreamily, his pique momentarily forgotten. He reached twitchingly for the pencil behind his ear, then spun back to the table and began scribbling calculations of the tangents of imaginary circles.

  The Knights nodded and smiled to one another over the gnomes' heads.

  By the time the sun had dropped an hour closer to the horizon, the gargantuan ballista was ready. From their vantage point in the tent, Commodore Brigg and Navigator Snork could see the professor scurrying about in its shadow, shouting last-minute orders. Someone lit the stone with a torch, setting fire to the tar covering every inch of its surface. As the flames blazed up, gnomes scattered in all directions, leaving the professor alone by the catapult’s release. In the light of the westering sun, they saw an axe rise up, then flash down. A report like the cracking of a whip echoed against the cliffs. There followed a tremendous bone-shaking thud, and a wave of sand spread like ripples in a pond away from Big Bertrem. The throwing arm rose slowly, bending under the weight of the massive flaming stone, but then counterweights swung into place, and a gout of steam escaped from what appeared to be a smokestack. Two giant flywheels, attached to the fulcrum post, began to whirl faster and faster. The throwing arm of the catapult hesitated for a moment, like a diver taking a deep breath before leaping, and then the entire contraption flipped over backwards, pivoting around a point in space centered on the house-sized stone. The spinning fly wheels dug in, throwing up a huge fountain of sand that instantly buried three dozen members of the Mishaps Guild who were rushing in to record and measure the event as it was happening. Meanwhile, the flywheels found purchase in the sand and the thing began to move. Its steam whistle screaming, the monstrous catapult tore across the beach and up into the hills beyond, where it sailed over the crest of a ridge and disappeared in a cloud of dust, rocks, and uprooted trees.

  Within moments, Professor Hap-Troggensbottle appeared from the wreckage down the beach, a bit battered but alive. His eyes beamed with delight. He approached the tent, slapping sand and dust from his beard and eyebrows. A pe
ncil, snapped cleanly in two, dangled behind his ear.

  “I’m tempted to think you did that on purpose,” Sir Wolhelm accused as he emerged from the tent.

  “I assure you, I could not produce that result again unless I tried,” the professor answered as he approached Commodore Brigg. “Now, what is the status of your ship? Are we prepared to disembark?”

  “Yes,” the commodore harrumphed, “except we are still looking for the security officer. We were hoping to get a Knight-a real Knight and not some blasted sorcerer. The name we have is Sir Grumdish. Do you know him?”

  “Grumdish?” Sir Wolhelm snorted as he approached. “Never heard of him.”

  His aide-de-camp, the young Thorn Knight, leaned over and whispered something into his commander’s ear. Sir Wolhelm’s eyes narrowed. “Him!”

  He turned to Commodore Brigg, smiling wolfishly. “Yes, of course. Take him with you. By all means. Sir Jarnett will show you to him. He isn’t far.” He strode away, calling for the squires to saddle Sir Jarnett’s horse.

  Within moments, a seemingly reluctant Sir Jarnett was mounted and leading the three gnomes and their kender companion up into the hills, taking a path not far from the one trailblazed moments before by Big Bertrem. When they had gone, a squire approached and reported that Sir Wolhelm’s warhorse was missing. The Knight eyed the hills suspiciously, considering whether to send a patrol to arrest the kender, but then he shook his head in disbelief, silently reprimanding himself. “Not even a kender,” he muttered.

  2

  The stream was no wider than an oxcart and shallow enough for a gnome to ford with his pants rolled up, if he didn’t mind cold piggies. The clear, icy water sprang in a noisy gush from the hillside at the edge of the meadow, then galloped and purled through a copse of oak, elm, and walnut trees. A few squirrels scampered and leaped in the evening shadows beneath the eaves of the trees.

  Where the stream emerged from the trees, someone had built a small wooden bridge. A little-used path, leading from the beach to Mount Nevermind in the distance, crossed the stream at this bridge. It was at this place that Sir Grumdish had taken his stand.

  As they entered the meadow valley, Commodore Brigg and his companions, including Sir Jarnett, found the Knight sitting his massive charger beside the bridge, as still and solid as a carving of weathered stone. He wore the armor and livery of a Knight of the Rose, but his armor was oddly antique even by generous standards. Though polished to a glassy sheen, his armor appeared dented in several places, while unaccountable bulges showed in others. The roses, kingfishers, and crowns on his breastplate looked worn and tired. At his side hung an enormous two-handed sword in a battered scabbard. In his left hand, he held a great kite shield painted with a golden cog at the fess point. Propped on his right stirrup and steadied by his right hand was an long, white jousting lance with a red pennant near its silver tip rippling in the evening breeze.

  Of his features, little could be discerned, except for a bit of white moustache hair dangling from beneath the bucket helm that completely covered his head. A thin, V-shaped slit in the front of the helm allowed for vision and a modicum of air. Like the rest of his antique armor, the helm exhibited signs of both carelessness and loving care. It was as battered as it was outdated, but otherwise shone like a mirror in the westering sun.

  His horse was a massive beast, but even an untrained eye could see, upon closer inspection, that this was no warhorse. With its big heavy withers, dangling lips and dull eyes, it looked more a beer-wagon horse than the fearless steed of a renowned and fearless Knight of the Rose.

  Sir Jarnett walked his horse across the meadow, the gnomes and the kender spreading in his wake, their eyes wide with curiosity. Surely these two sworn enemies-a Knight of Solamnia and a Knight of Neraka-could not meet but that blows would soon begin to rain. But as they drew closer, Sir Grumdish did not move or speak. Razmous began to suspect that he had fallen asleep, what with the buzzing of the flies and the purling of the stream and the warm sun shining through his visor. The kender was just stooping for a stone to plink off the Knight’s helm and wake him when a voice rang out, high and challenging, muffled but echoing, like a bee in a pipe.

  “Halt! Fare thee nary closer, lest ye care to tilt with me for the road, sirrah,” Sir Grumdish cried in some semblance of the ancient language of chivalry.

  Sir Jarnett stopped his horse and waited for the others to catch up. They gathered round him, their attention focused on the Knight.

  “Well, there he is,” Sir Jarnett said with a bored yawn. “He’s all yours.” So saying, he turned his horse and rode away.

  “Halt, miscreant Knight!” Sir Grumdish cried as he bounced angrily in the saddle. His horse took a ponderous step onto the bridge. It creaked ominously under its massive weight.

  “Halt, coward Knight! Stand to and fewter thy lance!” Sir Grumdish continued as his mount crossed the bridge in a slow rumble of hooves and cracking wood. “Onward! Run hard, run free, my brave heart, my bonnie steed!” He rocked in the saddle, trying to urge his mount into something resembling a gallop.

  Slowly, ponderous and unstoppable as a glacier, the great beast did manage to lift its head and come into the bit. Its broad back became like the rolling deck of a ship, and its rider a cargo broken free of its moorings. Sir Grumdish slipped backwards onto the horse’s withers and began to bounce, his feet in the stirrups and his elbows sticking straight out at the apex of each soaring bound, as though about to take flight. As he scrabbled clumsily at the reins, trying to maintain his seat, his shield sailed free like a pie plate in the wind, then his lance came loose and performed three cartwheels across the meadow before its point stabbed into the sandy soil and it jerked to a quivering stop, upright, like a flagpole. Sir Grumdish rode past it, shouting, “Whoa… Bright…Dancer!”

  Then the saddle girth snapped.

  Saddle and rider bounced once last time on the horse’s pumpkin-colored rump, then rose together, a little too slowly for belief, while the horse, galloped out from beneath them. At the top of their arcing flight, Sir Grumdish kicked free of the stirrups, and he and the saddle parted ways, like an apple sliced in half by the trick swordsman at the fair.

  The bonnie Knight struck the ground with a clang-and broke cleanly in two at the waist. His top half hounded along the path of the still-galloping horse, arms flailing, and a startling stream of curses and exclamations of pain flowed from within the helm. His bottom half bounced to its feet and began running in a large but ever tightening circle, like the proverbial chicken. The Knight’s horse continued obliviously across the meadow and vanished into the undergrowth of the trees beyond.

  The top half of the Knight finally rolled to a stop, expelling during its last few revolutions a gnome (whole and uninjured except for his pride) wearing only a dirty white loincloth and a rag wound turbanlike around his enormous bald brown head. As soon as he regained his feet, the gnome dove on top of the still-thrashing upper half of his armor, reached inside, and with a curse worthy of a dwarf, twisted some knob that shut the thing off. The arms fell to each side, limp and dead, while the gnome collapsed across the breastplate, exhausted.

  The legs continued their mad scamper around the meadow, passing the two gnomes and their kender companion, who watched them with something combining curiosity, amusement, and horror. Commodore Brigg snapped a short command, and Razmous dropped his hoopak and chased after the legs. But once he had caught up with the Knight’s legs, he didn’t quite know what to do with them, so he ran alongside, hopping up and down to try to see into the waist for the switch or lever to shut them off. Finally, finding no other solution, he threw his arms around the knees and tackled them. Legs and kender went down together in a scrabble of dust.

  The legs continued to thrash, flinging up large tufts of grass and odd items from the kender’s pouches. Razmous clung grimly to one knee, while the other battered him about the ears in its throes. His companions rushed to his aid. While Snork and Commodore Brigg wrestled the fr
ee leg, the professor felt inside the top of the legs. The legs suddenly fell limp and lifeless. They clung to the legs a few more moments in anticipation of their bursting into frenzied motion once again, before finally rising to their feet, slapping off the dust, and laughing nervously. Razmous gingerly palpated the pointy tips of his well-pummeled ears.

  The kender was about to say something clever when the turbaned gnome was suddenly among them, rudely shoving them out of the way as he knelt beside his armored legs and examined them for damage. “What did you do?” he angrily demanded of the professor. “You’d better not have broken anything.”

  “I simply flipped the kill switch,” Professor Hap said, pointing to the device in question, only to have his hand slapped away. “It seemed the logical thing to do,” he finished in hurt tones.

  The turbaned gnome stood and, crossing his grease-smeared arms in front of his naked chest, frowned grimly. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” he asked, studiously glaring at the kender.

  Commodore Brigg stepped forward. “We are searching for Sir Grumdish.”

  “Thou hast found us. What wouldst thou have of us?” the turbaned gnome asked.

  “We are gnomes of Mount Nevermind,” Commodore Brigg said. Razmous cleared his throat. “And a kender of impeccable reputation,” the commodore added.

  “Nevermind is home to the vile dragon Pyrothraxus and controlled by those evil Knights, is it not?” Sir Gram-dish shrewdly observed. “My Life Quest is to slay just such a dragon. I am busy at my quest. If you are its servants, I warn thee to get thee hence lest I sheath my blade in thy black innards.”