Conundrum

by Jeff Crook

  “I sometimes wonder. You were warned not to abuse the power of this artifact, yet here I find you using it to subdue your… evening’s entertainment.”

  “A simple spell,” he answered. “I could have cast it without the magic of the device.”

  “Remember that when you are at the bottom of the sea.”

  Tanar started, genuinely surprised.

  “You are ordered,” the Voice of the Night continued, “to accompany a ship of gnomes on their journey to find the sub-Ansalonian passage, and to report back everything that they find. Should they attempt to return to a Solamnic port, or find themselves in danger of capture by Solamnics or any other power, you will destroy the crew and scuttle the ship. Do you accept this assignment, even though it may mean your own death?”

  “I’ll do it,” Tanar answered darkly.

  “Of course, you know that Lord Targonne has ordered you on this journey, even though he has no confidence that these gnomes will succeed on their mission, and that he fully expects you may die with the gnomes in their ship. He would be rid of you, but without directly offending the Order of the Thorn. You, Sir Tanar, are a Thorn in his side. He fears you as he fears me.”

  “Then why do you concur with his orders?” Tanar ventured to ask.

  “Because I have confidence,” the Voice continued. “Confidence the gnomes will succeed in their curious task. Portents and auguries indicate a high probability of success. These gnomes are not yet aware that they are also working for me, to further my power, but you shall teach them this-and other lessons on my behalf. Besides, I do not wish to openly oppose Lord Targonne.”

  “How shall I proceed, then?” Tanar asked petulantly. He despised politics and didn’t really care who he was working for or why, as long as he was paid according to agreement.

  “You shall sail this submersible of theirs with them to the bottom of the Blood Sea and there discover the crack that leads to the Abyss. If you can find the way for me, Tanar, we shall enter the Abyss together.”

  Tanar’s face darkened. “The Abyss?” he growled suspiciously. “What do you seek there? Takhisis is no longer there. She doesn’t answer our prayers. She fled with the other gods from Allfather Chaos.”

  “It’s the Abyss, Tanar. Why do I need to explain every little detail to you? Think! If a magical artifact such as the communication device can grant a little power, how much more power is there in even one stone of the Abyss? The Abyss served once as the home of a goddess, Tanar. Its power must be infinite. And so shall be ours, if you succeed. Will you do it?”

  “I said I would,” he answered shortly. “Don’t I always do what I say?”

  “Eventually,” she answered. “In your own time. But you must not dally this time. You must be of the most serious mind. You must not fail. Barring any unforeseen accidents, the gnomes should be in Flotsam before winter arrives. Be ready for them.”

  “I will,” he said, glancing around and rehearsing his story of the poor woman’s suicide, as the Voice of the Night faded.

  11

  Even in Snork’s glass of farseeing, the boat was tiny, cutting its way through the green northern sea with two great sails of red and white stripes pushing it through the waves. A black flag, unadorned, rippled from the top of its single mast. They saw the white waves curling away from its sharp prow like parings before the planer blade.

  Snork passed the glass to Commodore Brigg. He sucked his teeth as he put his eye to it. “There’s no doubt,” he muttered. “She’s already seen us.”

  They had just rounded the northern tip of Nordmaar. Off the starboard bow lay a land sparsely populated-poor, terrorized by the ceaseless raids of buccaneers, and unfriendly to strangers. To port stretched the endless leagues of the Northern Courrain Ocean, which no ship had ever navigated and returned to tell the tale.

  Commodore Brigg passed the glass to Razmous, who sighed as he put the wonderful device to his eye. “I’ve never met a real live minotaur before,” he said. “Much less a pirate.”

  “It is to be hoped that continues,” the commodore said sternly.

  But Razmous went on. “It must be very interesting to have big cow horns sticking out of your head. Awfully convenient, I should imagine, for hanging things like umbrellas on them, when it is raining and you don’t have enough hands.” He lowered the glass and gazed out over the ocean at the tiny dot barely visible on the horizon.

  “Hey! Give me that!” Sir Grumdish snapped, indicating the glass of farseeing that was sliding into the kender’s pouch.

  “This? I thought you were through with it,” Razmous protested.

  “I haven’t even looked through it yet!” Sir Grumdish barked as he yanked the glass from the kender’s grasp.

  “Well, you should have said something!” retorted the kender in hurt tones.

  With a frown, Sir Grumdish lifted it to his eye and peered through. He harrumphed, then gnawed his lower lip. “What do you suppose is her crew complement?” he asked, lowering the glass and passing it to Conundrum.

  “Forty at least, not counting officers,” Snork said.

  Conundrum lifted the glass to his eye. The minotaur galley had drawn closer as they talked, near enough now to see tiny figures scurrying around on her decks. A steely blade flashed in the sunlight.

  “More than enough for the likes of us,” Sir Grumdish commented. “Well, someone will have to help me get my armor up here on deck.”

  “Nay, we cannot fend off a boarding,” the commodore said. “We’re a ship of exploration, not war.”

  “Well, it’s come to war, no matter what your intentions,” Sir Grumdish argued.

  “She’s lowering her sails!” Conundrum cried. “Perhaps she hasn’t seen us after all! "

  Commodore Brigg snatched the glass from Conundrum’s eye and put it to his own, a fierce grin splitting his white beard. After a few moments, the grin faded, and he passed the glass back to Snork. “She’s seen us all right. She’s putting out oars. They need oars to ram us and board us.”

  “Well, if we aren’t going to fight, what are we going to do?” Sir Grumdish asked.

  The commodore thought for a moment, some inner struggle revealed in the anguish of his expression. His hands gripped the rusty rail of the conning tower until his knuckles turned white. Then, sighing, he released his grip and plunged his hands into the pockets of his red jumpsuit. “We’ll submerge and wait her out.”

  “But you said-” Sir Grumdish began.

  “What would you have of me?” the commodore interrupted. “We cannot outrun her, and we dare not fight her, not even with UAEPs. Even if we sunk her, her crew would simply board us to save themselves. What good would that do us? We’d still be dead, and our Life Quests would remain incomplete.”

  “This ship is a submersible,” Snork chimed in cheerfully. “I think it’s high time we submersed.”

  “Aye!” the others agreed, even Sir Grumdish, albeit reluctantly.

  “Chief Conundrum, are you prepared to maintain proper oilage levels?” the commodore asked.

  “I think so, sir,” Conundrum answered.

  “Then man your station, sir,” Brigg ordered.

  “All hands! All hands!” Snork bellowed through the open hatch. “Prepare to submerge the ship!”

  Conundrum made his way into the ship while several gnomes rushed topside to lower the reefed sails and stow them in the forward compartments. Meanwhile, he threaded a path through the chaos of activity on the bridge until he reached the hatch leading down from the crew quarters to main engine room. Chief Portlost was in a tizzy, dashing in three directions at once and shouting orders at anyone who stopped to listen.

  “Conundrum!” he shouted when he saw the red-bearded oilage officer pressing through crew quarters, climbing over those busily stowing personal items and loose cargo beneath every available tube and pipe. “Conundrum, get over here! The main drive spring is in sorry shape!”

  “I just oiled it this morning!” Conundrum answered.


  “Well, it needs more oil, boy. Every gear and spring must be oiled. Never forget that.”

  “I know,” Conundrum shouted from the center of the crew quarters, where a large half-tube rose up from the floor and passed through the bulkhead above. “But first I have to grease the mast-lowering apparatus. We’re about to dive!” He dipped a large, hairy brush into a bucket and slopped black grease onto his shoes. He then began to paint the interior of the half-tube.

  “I already knew that, didn’t I?” the chief oilage officer shouted in reply as he adjusted a bank of large, important-looking levers, pulling some down, and pushing others up. A gnome rushed into the engine room with an armload of torches. He replaced the old ones with fresh new torches burning with bright merry flames, then rushed to the next room to do the same.

  “But what are we diving for?” the red-bearded chief shouted as he wound a few extra turns into the main drive spring and checked the torque meters for the diving and ascending flowpellars. “That’s what I want to know. And without a bit of warning!”

  “Minotaur pirates!” Conundrum shouted. Suddenly, the thick round wooden mast descended from above, nearly catching the bristles of his brush between it and the bracing-guidetube that he was greasing.

  “Minotaur pirates?” the chief cried, pausing in his frantic labors for a moment. “Save us!”

  Snork’s voice floated down from the bridge above. “Stand by to flood the forward ballast tank and engage the descending flowpellar!”

  Conundrum dropped his brush and bucket of grease, and, snatching up a small glass bottle with a long skinny neck that was filled with olive oil, he rushed forward to where a tangled nest of tubes and pipes protruded from the bulkhead. From the shadowy midst of the pipes peered the beady red eyes of a rat. “Out of the way, Onslow!” Conundrum shouted. “There’s work to do!” The rat he had nicknamed thusly scurried out and vanished beneath a sack of buckwheat flour.

  “Standing by to flood the forward ballast tank!” Conundrum shouted at almost the same time that Chief Portlost bellowed, “Standing by to engage the descending flowpellar!”

  A loud clang sounded from above, followed by a metallic grinding noise. “Secure all hatches!” Commodore Brigg ordered.

  “All hatches secured.”

  “Prepare to dive.”

  Four gnomes descended the ladder from the bridge, landing with four thumps on the deck of the crew quarters one right after another. Two hurried forward, one each to man the spring crank of the descending and ascending flowpellars, and the other two to man the crank of the main spring engine. If these were engaged, Conundrum would have to rush about keeping them oiled, but for the moment his main duty lay with the forward ballast tank valve, making sure it didn’t stick closed, or even worse, open.

  Snork’s voice floated down from above, “Flood the forward ballast tank!”

  In the engine room, Chief Portlost shouted, “Flooding the forward ballast tank, aye!” He dropped a large, heavy switch, and Conundrum heard water gurgling behind the bulkhead beside which he crouched. Satisfied that the valve was working properly, he ran aft, his bottle of oil sloshing in his fist. He ducked into the engine room, avoiding the two burly gnomes, stripped to the waist and already sweating profusely as they madly cranked the main drive spring. Conundrum took his place beside the aft ballast tank valve. He set the bottle of oil on the ground and noticed that its contents were not level. Instead, they tilted toward the front of the ship. The watertight door leading into the engine room slammed shut. Chief Portlost hurried to open and secure it.

  “Flood the aft ballast tank,” Snork shouted from the bridge, “and engage the descending flowpellar!”

  “Flooding the aft ballast tank, aye!” Chief Portlost responded, dropping another large, heavy switch into place. “Cross your fingers, lads,” he muttered under his breath.

  Presently, they heard the sound of gurgling water, but more important was what they didn’t see-water spewing in around the bulkheads.

  Conundrum watched the oil in his bottle slowly level out. Chief Portlost sighed.

  “Engaging the descending flowpellar, aye!” Portlost shouted triumphantly.

  A cheer went up from the bridge-it had been during this phase of the dive that the Indestructible sank on its second trial run. Chief Portlost reached above his head and pulled a string that ran forward through the engine room bulkhead. With a whirling noise, the Indestructible began to descend into the blue depths of the sea.

  As they sank, they noticed how the air began to change. Sound was dampened, yet at the same time they became acutely aware of new and unusual sounds. There was no longer the gentle slap and slosh of the sea against the hull, a noise they had become so used to hearing that they only noticed it now by its absence. The air became close, compressed, and more difficult to see through because of a growing haze. On the bridge, people began to cough, softly at first, then more harshly. The hull commenced to pop and creak most alarmingly, as if there were a company of dwarves outside beating it with hammers and prying at the seams with crowbars.

  The gnomes found that they could hear things outside the ship quite well. They heard all sorts of clicks, whirs, clutters, squeaks, pops, whoops, and warbles, as though they were in some kind of jungle aviary and not beneath the bright briny sea. They also heard the dip and splash of the oars of the approaching minotaur galley. Almost it seemed already on top of them, but after a time, they realized that this was but a trick of hearing.

  When they had descended a sufficient distance below the surface, Commodore Brigg ordered, between coughs and gasps for air, the flowpellars disengaged. The ship gradually slowed, but it never really seemed to stop. Even when lying motionless in the water, it seemed to those aboard that it was still sinking slowly. This was not the case, Commodore Brigg assured the crew that had begun to gather near the bridge. It was but a trick of the mind, like the sensation of flying one feels for days after being flung by a gnomeflinger for the first time. Everyone on the upper deck was coughing most uproariously now, as though the whole ship were trying desperately to get someone’s attention, with Conundrum and the chief alone as yet unafflicted by this strange new malady. Finally Chief Portlost noticed this oddity and raised his bushy eyebrows in consternation, pondering aloud, “Undersea sickness?”

  And so, in a silence broken by waves of hacking and wheezing, they waited and listened to the approaching pirate ship. It seemed to take much longer than any of them could have imagined. In fact, it took so long that many of the crew began to drop down the ladder by ones and twos, then in mass, even the officers from the bridge, all hacking out their lungs.

  “The ship is filling up with smoke,” Snork gasped as Conundrum helped him to a hammock.

  “Is it a fire?” Chief Portlost cried.

  “No,” Sir Grumdish wheezed. “It’s the torches. They’re smoldering.

  “It’s like a cave-in in a tunnel,” Conundrum cursed. “We’re sealed inside the ship, and we’re using up all the air! The torches need plenty of air to breath and burn properly. All they do is smoke.”

  “What we need is a vent, a tube to the surface, to let the smoke out,” Snork said. “Something that we can extend and retract…” He slapped weakly at his pockets, feeling for a pencil. “I’d draw up the design if I could only see!” he exclaimed. “My eyes are on fire.”

  “And I can barely breathe,” someone else said.

  “Well, we’re safe here for a while, at least,” the commodore said. “Extinguish all the torches on this level.”

  Commodore Brigg had recovered sufficiently to begin nervously pacing the crew quarters with his hands folded behind his back. Snork lay in his hammock while Conundrum held a cool cloth to his cousin’s eyes. Doctor Bothy sat in a small chair with his flab hanging over the sides, looking rather uncomfortable and put-out, like a child made to sit in a corner. Occasionally, a cough shook his bulk like a tub of jelly. Sir Grumdish lay half-dead of asphyxiation atop a pile of grain bags. The professor lea
ned against the forward bulkhead, eyeing Razmous the kender, who was following the commodore like a shadow of apprehension, his topknot bouncing with each step. Sometimes he was forced to duck a pipe or brace or strung hammock, which the commodore passed under with ease, so great was the difference in their height.

  “What are we waiting for?” Conundrum complained as Commodore Brigg and the kender passed him for the umpteenth time, stepping over his outstretched legs.

  “Nightfall,” the commodore answered curtly.

  “I’m bored,” Razmous sighed. If there was one thing that frightened seasoned travelers more than a kender’s assurance of “Don’t worry,” or the always portentous, “Oops!” it was the restless sigh of a bored kender. The commodore froze, and everyone turned his gaze on the kender. Even Sir Grumdish stirred uneasily in his sleep.

  Razmous looked up and found himself the center of attention, six faces staring at him gravely through the gloom. “What?” he asked innocently. He ran a hand down the length of his topknot. “Have I got something in my hair?”

  Everyone returned to whatever nervous habits in which they had been indulging. Razmous peered around at everyone suspiciously, as if he suspected they were playing a joke on him. It was then that he noticed how dark it had become on the bridge, as though everyone’s dark mood had filled up the very air itself.

  “It’s getting dark in here,” he commented. “What’s happening to the light?”

  As if cued by his words, the last torch flickered and went out. Darkness blacker than any goblin cave descended upon them all. The air seemed to be getting thinner by the moment, and what air they did manage to gasp into their lungs was tinged with the sharp sweaty scent of fear and burned-hair reek of torchsmoke.

  Into this came the sound of the oars once again splashing around just above them. Commodore Brigg called for quiet, and gradually the interior of the ship grew as noiseless as it was dark; only the occasional muffled cough broke the stillness. Everyone waited, staring up with bulging eyes, ears straining to hear.