Conundrum

by Jeff Crook

  “That’s torn it!” Razmous whispered. “There’s a light! Someone’s coming. We can’t get in this way now.”

  “Let’s hide. Maybe they’ll pass.” By the light shining from the passageway, they made their way to a crack in the far wall and squeezed themselves into it to hide. Razmous had to turn his pouches sideways just to make it inside the crack before the light emerged into the cave.

  “This crack must lead somewhere,” the kender whispered. “I feel a draft.”

  “I should say you do,” Conundrum answered with a barely-suppressed snicker. “You’ve finished tearing out the seat of your breeches.”

  But they had no more time to discuss cave exploration or the superiority of various fabrics. From the small passage appeared as strange a procession as even the kender was ever likely to see in his long and adventurous life. A dozen or more badgers and hedgehogs, some with one head, some with two, and some with as many as four, strode into the cavern. They walked upright with a curious waddling gait and carried in their tiny paws a comparatively tall pole. From the end of the pole depended a small glass globe glowing with a wan blue light. Conundrum realized with a start that the globes were glowing because they were filled with the tiny glowworms they had seen earlier in the trap. In quick whispers, he described to Razmous what he, being wedged in front, saw.

  “Ah, yes! How ingenious!” the kender replied also in a whisper. “We could use those onboard the boat when we dive!”

  Next to emerge from the passageway was a pair of badgers crawling along on all fours. These looked more primitive and stupid-and vicious-than their upright, multi-headed fellows, and each wore a type of muzzle made of woven grapevine. The badgers were bound together by a sort of harness, to which was attached a squat, two-wheeled cart. Atop the cart, secured with numerous ropes and blackberry vines, lay the enormous bulk of their friend and shipmate, the good doctor Bothy. Another pair of muzzled badgers appeared behind the cart, towing Sir Grumdish similarly trussed. Last came a second company of badgers and hedgehogs, some carrying coils of rope, others with tiny silver crossbows held at the ready. With ponderous ceremony they crossed the floor of the cavern and vanished into the nighttime forest.

  Conundrum slipped out of their hiding place and scampered silently to the cave’s mouth. Razmous followed, and the two of them peered out of the cave into the night-dark woods. It was as though the motley group had vanished from the face of Krynn. The two crept out, listening, staring into the deep shadows for any sign of their friends. Finally, they spotted a gleam of blue light, like a will-o-wisp floating up the hillside through the trees. They set off after the light, moving as quietly and quickly as possible in the unfamiliar woods.

  Before they reached the hilltop, they came upon the returning party of badgers and hedgehogs. Razmous scampered like a squirrel up a tree, while Conundrum hid behind a large black boulder overgrown with gray lichens and straggling vines of blackberry laden with unripe red fruit. The badgers passed first, pulling their now-empty carts, followed closely by the hedgehogs. When they had gone, vanished with hardly a sound down the hill, Conundrum stole out from his hiding place.

  The kender swung down from his branch and landed with a crunching thump in the leaves. “What do you suppose they’ve done with them?” the kender asked.

  A scream of terror, echoing through the woods, seemed to answer his question. They paused a moment, their faces turning gray as they looked at one another, then Razmous was off like a shot, quickly leaving Conundrum struggling up the hillside as fast as his legs could carry him. Soon, he was utterly alone in the vast dark wood, too frightened to call out, with only the steady blue glow at the hilltop to guide him.

  As Conundrum neared the light, he slowed and crept forward cautiously. Another scream rent the night, followed closely by a long rumbling laugh, like a boulder rolling down the hillside. A screen of matted vines hid from him the source of the light, which was now red-he guessed its cause-and the laughter. He tried to find a way through the vines, but finding them thorny and tangled, he chose to search for a path around. He started off to his right, only to stumble into a hole of some sort. He almost cried out in surprise, but something caught him and kept him from falling. At the same moment, a small hand clapped over his mouth. He struggled a moment, then grew still at the sound of Razmous’s voice whispering in his ear.

  “Be very, very quiet, unless you want to get eaten,” the kender said as he removed his hand from Conundrum’s mouth and set him back on his feet.

  “Why? What’s wrong?” Conundrum asked.

  In answer, the kender pointed through a gap in the vines. Conundrum closed one eye and peered through.

  In the clearing beyond stood a troll, its massive fists resting on its narrow hips, and its long gangly neck craned back to stare up into the trees at the two gnomes dangling just out of its long-armed reach. The badgers and hedgehogs had left a half dozen of their glowwormglobes lying about on the ground, apparently either to attract the troll or to allow the gnomes to see their doom. The globes glowed with a deep crimson light as the gnomes above struggled and wept. The troll stood below them, contemplating a way to get at the juicy, vine-wrapped morsels.

  Doctor Bothy, being the fatter of the two, especially attracted the troll’s attention. The creature gazed at him with its black eyes and smacked its leathery lips in anticipation.

  “A troll!” Conundrum gasped. He had heard of such monsters, but it was the first he had ever seen. It was nearly as tall as the chaos beast that had nearly eaten him a few weeks ago, and it was tremendously strong, as it proved when it strode over to the towering oak from which the gnomes dangled, grabbed its massive trunk in its claws, and shook the tree vigorously. Doctor Bothy and Sir Grumdish tossed and jangled at the end of their ropes, but they did not fall. The troll growled in annoyance and stared up at them.

  “Isn’t this the same place where-” Conundrum began.

  “Where we buried the haggis, yes,” Razmous finished for him.

  “Well, that’s awfully convenient. It makes things much easier.”

  “Easier? How?” Razmous asked.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got a idea!” Conundrum said, scrunching up his eyes in a huge grin. Razmous leaned close as Conundrum explained his plan. The kender only smiled more broadly as he heard it. He clapped a hand over his mouth to suppress a giggle.

  “Can you do it?” Conundrum asked.

  “Certainly!” Razmous bragged. “No problem.”

  “After you do your part, I’ll skinny up the tree and cut them down,” Conundrum said.

  “Then you’ll need this,” Razmous said as he dug through his pouches. He removed something and pressed it into the gnome’s hand. Conundrum opened his fingers and looked at it.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Commodore Brigg’s remarkable all-purpose-thousand-in-one-uses-folding-knife. He must have dropped it while we weren’t eating our haggis, and I forgot to give it back to him,” Razmous explained. “When I give the signal, you can start.”

  With that, he dashed away as silently as a cat.

  “Signal? But what’s the signal?” Conundrum asked, but Razmous had already gone, vanished, as quiet as quiet can. He had left his pouches, which meant he meant business. Conundrum chewed his lip and peered back through the gap in the vines, waiting and listening.

  “I don’t think I can skinny up anything,” he muttered, having second thoughts. “Oh, well. I’ll solve that puzzle when I come to it.”

  The troll apparently had a new idea for getting at the gnomes. In one huge long, knobby hand it held a largish stone, about the size of mush melon, and it was at the moment searching the ground for another. Conundrum had no doubt that, once it had dug up a similarly-sized boulder, it would fling them at his friends, like a child trying to knock a beloved toy from the crook of a tree. Conundrum gripped Commodore Brigg’s wonderful all-purpose knife and waited. He wondered for a moment whether it had a tool that might prove of use against
trolls. He knew it had one for clipping nose hairs, but he didn’t know if trolls had nose hairs, nor did he much care to get close enough to find out. But they did have jolly big noses, of that he was sure.

  Then he heard the kender’s voice on the other side of the clearing. Razmous was shouting in a mocking singsong voice, “I say, you’ll never get them down that way. What you need is a ladder or longer arms. But I don’t suppose you have thought of that, have you, your being a troll and all?”

  The troll stopped and glared around, its piggy black eyes prying into every shadow. Conundrum felt sure he would be seen, despite the screen of the vines. He crouched down and gripped the all-purpose knife more tightly.

  Meanwhile, Razmous continued. “I heard once that trolls reproduce by budding, but I don’t believe it. They say that when you want to have a family, you just rip off various body parts and throw them on the ground to grow new versions of yourself. That must be why you are all so butt-ugly. But of course, that can’t be true, because everyone knows that trolls are so ugly when they’re born the doctor slaps the mother.”

  The troll dropped his boulders and growled. His long warty nose tested the air.

  “And their noses are so long because that’s what the doctor steps on when he pulls out your tails,” Razmous taunted. His voice seemed to come from various places within the forest, first here and now there, so that the troll was making itself dizzy turning round and round.

  “Of course, when he pulls out your tail, most of your brain comes with it, the troll butt being the scientifically proven location of the troll brain. Or, I should say, what’s left of the troll brain. When you sit down, aren’t you afraid you will smother yourself?”

  With a howl of rage, the troll tore off into the forest. Razmous’s voice floated back, pitched high to carry over the troll’s infuriated thrashing through the forest.

  “Now, Conundrum!”

  Conundrum scurried from his hiding place into the clearing and ran over to the trunk of the tree where Doctor Bothy and Sir Grumdish hung, their mouths open wide in surprise. Searching all around the tremendous bole of the tree, Conundrum found no way to ascend and rescue his companions. He was as stuck as the troll, even more so. He stood beneath his friends, looking up at them helplessly.

  “You need a ladder,” Sir Grumdish said. “I don’t suppose there is time to hurry back to the village. That troll won’t chase him long. There hasn’t been a troll born that could catch a kender in a wood.”

  “But I don’t have a ladder,” Conundrum cried. “What can I do?”

  “It’s a shame Commodore Brigg isn’t here,” Doctor Bothy sighed. “He’d have a an idea. Born leader, the commodore is.”

  “Oh, please, Bothy! Be reasonable. The lad feels bad enough as it is. No use comparing him to the good commodore. He’s a great gnome, but he certainly doesn’t go about with ladders in his pockets.”

  “Oh, but he does!” the doctor protested. “He has the most wonderful knife, invented by the master of the weapons guild in Mount Nevermind.”

  “I have it here!” Conundrum exclaimed. He showed it to them, holding it up on the palm of his hand.

  “That’s it! Glory and salvation, Conundrum, how did you come by it?” the doctor asked.

  “Razmous!”

  “I might have guessed,” Sir Grumdish said. “Are you trying to tell us, Bothy, that thing has a ladder in it?”

  “Yes!” Doctor Bothy said. “A mini-extension ladder. See if you can find it, Conundrum.”

  “I’ll try.” He began flipping out the knife’s various tools and apparatuses. There was a curly-cue wire useful for removing corks from bottles of medicine and whatnot, a thin, flat shim such as a burglar might use to slip open the latch on a window, a tiny pair of scissors not useful for much of anything, a larger pair of scissors useful for trimming hedges or the beards of dwarves, a backscratcher, a small plow, a bronze birdbath with a sundial in the middle, a spoon, a fork, even a tiny plate and frying pan. Conundrum wondered if he might not soon come across the stove, and the dinner, too! Before long, he looked as if he had the entire contents of a kender’s bedtable drawer clutched in his hands.

  Suddenly, out of the commodore’s pocket apparatus sprang a thirty-foot ladder with rubber safety pads on the feet to keep it from slipping. Conundrum nearly fell over in surprise, which would have been disastrous, as he would likely have been skinned, filed, polished, trimmed, julienned, and uncorked all at the same time.

  “Good show!” Sir Grumdish shouted. “Now climb up here and cut us down.”

  “Um…” Conundrum hesitated, still flipping through tools.

  “What is it?” Doctor Bothy hissed. “Hurry, before the troll comes back!”

  “Um, there doesn’t seem to be… um, a knife,” Conundrum said as he looked up in dismay. Then he spun round, for something was coming through the woods toward them.

  Razmous Pinchpocket ran for his life, as only a kender can run when a troll is hot on his heels. He could almost feel its hot, reeking breath on his neck as his topknot cracked like a flag in the wind of his speed. The dark forest flashed by, and he dodged, dipped, ducked, and leaped like a whirling dervish, avoiding low-hanging branches that would have brained him, groping roots that would have tripped him, and looming trunks that would have pulverized him had he run into them head on.

  And he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  There is nothing that makes a kender feel quite so alive as the hot breath of doom blowing down his shorts. Perhaps it is the nearness of death that makes the creatures so enjoy life, like the condemned prisoner who treasures every moment, every glimmer of the sun off the spider-webs in his cell, the taste of the earth in the stale bread and rank water that is his last meal. The kender race is without fear, a trait that gives them their power and indeed their very nature, their spirit, their reason for living, and at the same time usually leads to their demise. For it is lack of fear that makes them such intrepid travelers, and it is lack of fear that provides the only real check on their population. The kender are too peaceful and good-natured to involve themselves in war, too clever with their hands in other peoples pockets to ever starve, and too mobile to be threatened by plague. The normal limiting factors that keep most civilizations from destroying themselves utterly or so theorize the gnomes of the Philosophers” Guild, are completely absent from the kender race because of their very nature. So the gods made them fearless, to keep them from ruling the world.

  But Razmous wasn’t thinking of all this as he fled from the troll. He was thinking of his leap. He must time the leap perfectly, or else end up on top of an angry troll at the bottom of a very deep, sword-lined hole.

  Of course, it had come to him as he sat in the briars looking at the troll stalking round his dangling friends, that the badgers and hedgehogs had built their trap to catch trolls, among other things. Nothing else could explain the trap’s gargantuan scale, its huge stones, and wide, deep, sword-lined pit. And he thought, if I can get the troll to chase me to the pit, maybe I can get him to fall into it, too. Of course, there is always the danger that the limb will break, or that I will miss it in the dark, or that I won’t be able to leap the hole…

  Really, he reminded himself, he had been around gnomes for far too long. He was almost beginning to think like a gnome, more concerned with a thousand possibilities and designing against what might go wrong than concentrating on making it go right-or at least trying to make it go right. The trying was the important part, he reminded himself, as he slapped aside a sapling and hurtled a fallen log. After this voyage, he planned to find some kender and go on a real adventure for a change.

  Then he saw it, or thought he saw it. He saw something that certainly looked like it-a darker spot against the near-blackness of the forest floor, and a tree looming over it. The troll was almost on his heels, and there were twenty yards to go, twenty open yards in which the troll’s longer legs could gain the advantage. Razmous wondered if he would soon feel the troll’s
hot breath upon his neck, like in the stories told by bards. Ten yards now, and he felt something tug briefly at his topknot. It might have been the troll clutching at the rippling pennant of hair streaming out behind the kender, or it might have been only a bit of underbrush becoming momentarily entangled in his topknot. In any case, it gave Razmous the brief surge of encouragement-he liked to call it-to cover the last few yards and leap for the tree’s overhanging limb.

  He caught it, swung up almost vertical, and reversed his grip like a trapeze artist so that on the down swing he’d be facing the way he had come. He swung down to find the troll teetering on the edge of the trap, its long arms swinging wildly, trying to maintain its balance. Seeing the kender within easy reach, it shot out one clawed hand and grabbed him by the legs, and this, oddly enough, proved its downfall.

  Razmous, caught in the troll’s deadly grasp, tried to pull free, which was just enough to overbalance the troll and drag it into the pit. Of course, now Razmous was dangling from a tree limb, and the troll was dangling from him. The kender cried out in agony as he felt his arms being wrenched from their sockets, while the troll’s cruel nails dug into the flesh of his legs. The troll thrashed and kicked, trying to find some purchase with its long black toes against the sides of the trap’s stony walls, and it roared in fury and fear. Only by the most heroic effort did Razmous manage to hang onto the tree limb as long as he did.

  He felt his fingers slipping, slipping… the skin of his palms tearing against the cruel bark of the tree…

  But it wasn’t his skin or even his joints that gave way first. It was his breeches. Worn to a frazzle from sliding down chutes and crawling through stone cracks and bramble patches, the last few threads now tore with a small ripping noise. The troll seemed to hang in the air a moment, staring in amazement at the sun-bleached yellow rags clutched in its fist, before it vanishing with a cry down the hole-a cry that, seconds later, was suddenly cut short.