Conundrum

by Jeff Crook

  “If we fire the tubes without the UAEPs inside, I calculate we could generate approximately twice the normal force,” the professor continued. “That, in combination with the positive and negative buoyancy induced by the repeated flooding and evacuating of the aft ballast tank, might be enough to break us free.”

  “By Reorx, I think you’ve got something, Professor!” the commodore applauded. “All right, gnomes, let’s make it so. Sir Tanar! Come here, if you would, sir.”

  The Thorn Knight approached, warily eyeing Doctor Bothy, who still stood by with his anesthetic hammer ready. The rest of the crew scurried to their tasks, except for Conundrum and Razmous, who stood close by, listening. Conundrum hoped the commodore wouldn’t offend the Thorn Knight.

  “See here, you’re a wizard, right?” the commodore asked.

  Sir Tanar’s eyes narrowed, and he straightened himself almost to his full height, but carefully, so as not to bump his skull on the pipes overhead. “I am,” he answered guardedly.

  “Well, we could use some light out there, to see how we are progressing. I’ve always heard wizards could make lights appear with a snap of the fingers. Is it true?”

  “The light spell is one of our simpler forms of magic,” Tanar said with caution.

  “Well, do you think you could cast one for us?” the commodore said. “I’d think better of you, if you did.”

  “But what shall I cast the spell upon?” Sir Tanar snapped. “I must have a target.”

  The commodore glanced around for a moment, considering. His eyes finally came to rest on the Peerupitscope. “There!” he said, pointing at the place where the scope passed through the hull of the ship. “Cast your spell there, and then we’ll raise it up until the light is outside the ship.”

  Sir Tanar allowed that this was rather a good idea. He slowly approached the Peerupitscope, ducking his head to avoid a pipe, all the while eyeing its cool, gleaming metal cylinder. Where it passed through the hull of the ship, a black, flexible seal prevented the seawater from rushing in around it. Even so, he noticed a few droplets of moisture gathered around the seal, and he thought about all that dark weight of water pressing down on top of them. This settled him to the task at hand.

  He closed his eyes, stilling the wild angry beating of his heart, concentrating on the magic flowing sluggishly through his veins. A few years ago, he might have cast this simple spell with hardly a thought. Now, he knew it would cost him.

  He opened his eyes, lifted one arm and pointed a clawlike finger at the top of the Peerupitscope. A brilliant white light flared into being, starkly illuminating the bridge of the Indestructible and casting harsh shadows in its corners and recesses. Conundrum squinted in the sudden light, but Razmous blinked at it in open-mouthed wonder.

  Sir Tanar staggered, feeling drained. The spell had exhausted the last of his powers. “Conundrum,” he said weakly. The gnome rushed to his side, but Razmous was too busy staring in awe at the magical light to notice, and the commodore was shouting down to engineering to be ready at the ballast tanks.

  “Help me to my cabin. I am… too weak.” Tanar sighed as he sagged against Conundrum, carefully, so as not to overburden him. The two staggered forward, forgotten by everyone in their excitement.

  20

  Commodore Brigg stepped back and shouted, “Raise the Peerupitscope!”

  The shaft of metal slowly and silently slid upward, and almost immediately the interior of the bridge was plunged once more into near-total darkness, with only the dim light of a single glowwormglobe hanging from a overhead pipe. Yet through the porthole there now shone a strong reddish glow. In it, the hull of the sunken pirate ship was plainly visible, as was a school of small silvery fish that flashed briefly into view.

  “Stop!” the commodore said. “Hold the Peerupitscope right there.”

  Snork climbed up from engineering and took his place at the helm. Sir Grumdish hurried from his quarters, from which he had retrieved his Solamnic sword. It now clanked at his side, much too large for him to carry. The professor joined him at the fire control station. Doctor Bothy leaned in the hatchway leading forward to the officers” quarters, almost filling it with his enormous bulk.

  The commodore looked round at his officers and the seventeen remaining members of his crew-Conundrum had not yet returned from helping Sir Tanar to his cabin. A deep sense of pride brought a fierce smile to his wrinkled brown face. He buttoned his jacket up to his neck, then tugged his leather cap tighter down over his eyes. He glanced down the ladder and saw Chief Portlost looking up at him. The chief gave a thumbs-up, then tugged his beard for luck.

  “All right,” the commodore said, clearing his throat. “Flood the aft ballast tank.”

  His order was answered a moment later by a deep gurgling noise. The Indestructible slowly sank, settling onto the muddy bottom of the Blood Sea. Swirls of silt filled the view through the porthole, but they saw that the hole in the side of the galley seemed to widen a bit, and a few loose timbers broke free and floated out of sight.

  They waited a moment, listening, hearing the creaking of wood, and far off, a mournful sound-the song of a whale.

  “Blow the aft ballast tank,” the commodore ordered.

  A hissing, rushing noise now sounded from the pipes crisscrossing the roof and running beneath the deck. The Indestructible rose upward, loosening a few more timbers, but before she completed her short ascent, Commodore Brigg turned to Sir Grumdish and said in a low, controlled voice, “Fire both tubes.”

  An explosive rush shook the ship. Wood howled against rusty iron as the Indestructible lurched backward a half-dozen feet before grinding once more to a halt, firmly wedged in place once again.

  The crew cheered, but the commodore silenced them with a glare. “Once more,” he said. “Pressurize both UAEP tubes. This time, stand by to flood the forward ballast tank as well.”

  “Aye, sir!” Chief Portlost shouted up from below.

  “Flood the aft ballast tank,” the commodore ordered.

  Again, a gurgling noise sounded from behind the bulkheads, and the Indestructible slowly sank, pivoting around her bow wedged in the pirate ship. This time, before it settled on the bottom, the commodore spun and shouted to Sir Grumdish, “Now, fire the port tube!” Then, “Navigator, rudder hard to starboard!”

  A rush from the tube and the ship lurched sideways in the hole, tearing out more timbers.

  “Flood the forward ballast tank now!” he shouted as he raised one fist and shook it at the galley. Water gurgled forward. The ship teetered.

  “Hard to port, Navigator!” Brigg shrieked. “Hard to port! Fire the starboard tube!”

  A rush of water, a groan of metal, and suddenly they were free, the dark hull of the galley receding slowly before them, vanishing into the gloom of the deep sea as the Indestructible floated away. They looked down upon her, lying below them on the uniform mud of the sea floor, the hole amidships, the deck littered with wreckage, and here and there a form, a body, tangled in the rigging or trapped beneath a spar.

  They did not cheer.

  After a time, Commodore Brigg cleared his throat. “Very well, Navigator. You may engage the engines. Well done. Well done, all of you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Snork said with sudden and sincere emotion. He turned, and with a trembling voice shouted, “Engage the main!”

  “Engaging the main, aye!” Chief Portlost answered from below.

  The Indestructible slowed in its rearward spiraling ascent as the main flowpellars swirled into action. As she glided to a stop and then started forward, Snork steered her into a course dead ahead. The galley disappeared below them. Before them lay a vast and featureless expanse of mud. Beyond it there seemed to be a darker area, a place where the rusty mud gave way to something blacker, perhaps the top of some submerged mountain.

  Commodore Brigg walked forward and stood beside the kender. Together they peered into the gloom illuminated by the magical light still burning atop the Peerupitscope. />
  “Where in the Abyss are we?” the commodore whispered.

  “Not the Abyss, sir,” Snork said with a sigh.

  As they drew nearer, the dark shape began to resolve into a recognizable outline-a vast, dark crater. As the ship passed over the crater’s edge and nosed downward, they saw in its midst recognizable shapes-walls, roofs, towers, all shattered, broken, and covered with hanging growths. As they sank down among once-stately avenues, their paving stones buried under three hundred years of sediment, mighty trees that once lined them reduced to wasted, mud-red stumps, black windows gazed back at them from the ruined edifices that lined the ways.

  “It’s Istar!” Razmous gasped.

  Conundrum gazed in awe at the ruins of Istar visible through the porthole in Sir Tanar’s cabin.

  At the heart of Istar had stood the Temple of Paladine, the most magnificent of all the temples of the city-of the world-from which the Kingpriest ruled his empire with a hand guided by wisdom and piety. Yet like his city and his empire, deluded by his own grandeur, the Kingpriest sought glory for himself rather than for Paladine. In his arrogance, he called upon the gods to grant him the same powers that had been bestowed upon the hero Huma in humility. In their rage, the gods cast a fiery mountain upon the temple of the Kingpriest, destroying it and the city and the lands about, and plunging the world into a darkness of despair that lasted for over two hundred years.

  It was through this ancient city, ravaged by fire and earthquake, wracked by the anger of the gods, drowned by the sea, its glory lost forever, and now a ruin covered by a blanket of rust red mud, that the Indestructible picked her way. Guided by the sure hand of Navigator Snork, they soared over vast fields of rubble and down boulevards between buildings broken as though the entire city had been lifted up a hundred feet in the air and then dropped. Occasionally they came upon some house or shop or temple that had somehow escaped the Cataclysm, only to be consumed by the sea. Everywhere lay the wrecks of ships, countless ships, that had been sucked down to their doom by the great Maelstrom that once swirled here.

  Yet even here, this place most forsaken by the gods, there was life. Much of it was small and hard to find. Pensive and shy, it hid in cracks and in the dark interiors of buildings, or beneath the rubble, or buried in three hundred years worth of silt, with only its spines or the bulges of its eyes showing above. They saw shadows-some small and compact, others long and snaky, and still others broad and flat like flying carpets or cloaks lifted by in the wind-dart away at their approach or as they coursed overhead.

  Of other types of sea life there was plenty. Small, transparent krill and queer prawns striped like bumblebees swarmed around the magical light shining from their half-raised Peerupitscope. The broken avenues were dotted with small black creatures covered entirely in long spines, like some kind of sea porcupine. These left long serpentine trails in the mud that could be followed for hundreds of yards. Many of the walls that survived the Cataclysm were covered with large bulbous growths, out of which darted (in a most startling fashion) the hollow tops of long, red worms with white frills like coxcombs or trailing white beards. These seemed mostly to hunt the prawns and smaller fish, though they saw growing on the side of one large ruin a fantastically bearded and frilled worm that could have easily swallowed the ship whole. Conundrum was glad to see that Snork was steering a course well around it, though he could hear the kender shrilly crying for a closer look.

  For the most part, the ship followed the crisscrossing avenues when they were visible. Conundrum had spent many an hour in Flotsam looking over old maps of the city of Istar, and so he knew that the larger streets led to the center of the city, where they expected to find the chasm that led to the Abyss.

  Sir Tanar had studied many of the same maps, and longer. With his practiced eye, long used to searching ancient tomes for hints to magical secrets, he could easily pick out the landmarks of the city, ruined though they were. There lay the outline of the Temple of Mishakal, and beyond it, the mighty pillars of the Stonemason’s Guild, toppled and forlorn, their marble flutings pitted and scarred by the relentless teeth of the all-devouring sea that dissolved everything-wood, iron, steel, marble, even a man’s bones. Only gold and precious gems were immune. Reminded of this, the Thorn Knight’s eyes searched greedily for any glint or sparkle among the rubble, but the sea elves and the evil creatures that once haunted this accursed place had long ago picked Ishtar’s bones clean of her last treasures. There was nothing left on the surface but muddy, wasted ruins and a dim memory of the city’s vanished glory.

  Even as he searched, knowing such searching to be vain, ever did Sir Tanar probe the dim distance for some sign of the chasm, the pit down which the temple of the Kingpriest was said to have fallen when struck by the fiery mountain-fallen down to the Abyss itself. More than any gold or jewels, he longed to find the lost gate leading to the realm of his former goddess, Takhisis, Queen of Darkness. She was no longer there, he knew. She had fled with the other gods, fled from the awful face of Chaos.

  Tanar knew where it must lay. The chasm must be at the heart of the city, and so he turned his eyes thither. The Indestructible continued along her course, and it seemed to Sir Tanar and Conundrum both that the nearer they came to the center of Istar, the greater the destruction they saw. Now, they saw few standing structures of any sort, and the ground was a broken and jumbled mass of stone and mud. No longer could they discern the streets and avenues of this once great city. All was tumbled together-column, doorpost, and cobblestone. Only the navigator’s peerless sense of direction held them on the true course.

  Soon they were rewarded. Sir Tanar’s breath caught in his throat when he saw it-a gaping rent in the earth that led to a pit as black as any nightmare hell.

  “There it is, Conundrum,” Tanar said in a voice trembling with excitement, “the door to glory.”

  Conundrum, misunderstanding the wizard, nodded in agreement and continued to stare open-mouthed through the porthole. Their breath had begun to fog the glass, so he wiped it with his sleeve, but this only served to smear it and further ruin his view-it had been some days since he last washed his robe. He turned to search for a clean rag and found Sir Tanar pulling a crate up to the edge of his hammock.

  On top of the crate lay the curious box Conundrum had almost tossed out the window that morning at the Sailor’s Rest when he and Sir Tanar first met. As soon as the Thorn Knight had moved the crate into position, he seated himself carefully in the hammock and opened the box.

  Unable to contain his curiosity, Conundrum edged closer to see what rare and magical treasures lay inside it, but Sir Tanar turned quickly, as if sensing the gnome’s approach, and said, “Make sure the door is closed securely, Conundrum. The others would not understand, were they to see what I am about to show you.”

  Conundrum hurried to do as he was bade. A strange loathing overcame him as he tested the latch-a soiled feeling, as if he were betraying his friends. Yet at the same time, he felt superior to them, as if they weren’t his friends at all or didn’t deserve to share in the wizard’s secrets. A voice inside him was screaming for rescue, but it never found its way past his teeth.

  Assured that the door, which had no lock, would not suddenly fly open, Conundrum moved to the wizard’s side. With a predatory smile on his narrow face, Sir Tanar turned the box slightly so that the gnome could better see what lay within. Conundrum leaned closer, his eyes growing wide in his wrinkled brown face. But then a frown creased his red beard. It was only a silver plate set into the lid of the box. He had expected at the very least to behold some bejeweled rod of great power and mysterious purpose, or a tome filled with vile spells, the mere sight of which would drive the uninitiated to madness and death. But it was only a silver plate. He could not hide his disappointment.

  Despite himself, Sir Tanar couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. He had hoped at least to elicit a gasp of awe from his ensorcelled companion. But then again, how was a simple gnome supposed to grasp the i
mport of what he beheld? A gnome could not feel the magic that radiated from this artifact of power, nor was he likely to divine its purpose and uses. Conundrum’s mind was geared to understanding gears and levers and redundant safety systems, not the nuances and subtleties of magical paraphernalia.

  Tanar had his reasons for exposing his secret to the gnome. The time had come for him to dominate Conundrum completely, to bind him to his will. Using the power of the magical communications device, he could cast a spell that would create such a powerful bond that only death could break it. Once enslaved, the gnome would do anything he asked of him, even murder his companions.

  To prepare Conundrum for the spell, Tanar started by creating as friendly and companionable an atmosphere as possible. The sharing of a secret would open the gnome to suggestion, so Tanar began to explain to Conundrum how the magical plate was used to communicate across great distances.

  “There are actually two of these plates, each one made of silver polished to a mirror sheen, as you can see,” he said. “This one is but half of a matched pair. When the proper incantation is spoken, its twin, wherever it is in the world or outside it, even in the Abyss, will ring like a bell. These two mirrors then become like a single window. Whoever sits before this mirror can be seen in the reflection of the other mirror, and whoever sits before the other mirror can be seen here.”

  “Are you going to make it work now?” Conundrum asked. “Who are you going to contact? You…”

  His voice trailed off as the plate chimed of its own accord.

  “Did you do that?” Conundrum asked.

  “Silence!” Sir Tanar snapped. The plate chimed again, insistently. Suddenly, his reflection on its surface vanished, replaced by the now-familiar spot of oily darkness. Conundrum’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of it, but he said nothing.

  “It is good to see that you are still alive, Tanar,” the Voice said from the darkness.