Conundrum Read online

  In the center of the deck, a large dark opening into the cargo hold gaped wide, its heavy doors swung open to either side as if, as the ship sank, its crew or those who sunk it had tried to loot its cargo. It filled him with loathing just looking at this dark hole, for it made him think of those who might have been trapped below. Perhaps their bodies were still there, but Conundrum had no desire to see them. He turned away and looked up for some sign of the Indestructible.

  At last he found it, hardly visible at all in the distance, a dark shadow against the darker blue of the sea. Almost he thought he could discern a tiny shadow slowly rising toward it, and he imagined that this was Razmous or the chief being hauled aboard. He hoped that Sir Grumdish too had made it safely to the ship, despite the danger of the sharks.

  This made him think of his own sharks, and looking up he confirmed that they were still there, slowly circling overhead like vultures in a stormy sky. Even if those onboard the Indestructible had noted where he splashed down, and even if they managed to lower him a rope, he doubted he would survive the ascent. He would be like a worm on a fishing line, an irresistible lure to all those hungry sharks as he rose slowly up toward the ship. They’d tear him to ribbons.

  For a moment, he had a vision of a cleanly picked skeleton being pulled aboard the Indestructible, one skeletal hand grimly clinging to the rope.

  Despite it all, Conundrum chuckled. This was no time to despair, he reminded himself. This was but another kind of puzzle to solve, one with higher stakes-much higher indeed. But a puzzle just the same.

  Now that he had had time to take in his surroundings, Conundrum realized that the sunken ship lay on somewhat of a slope. The bow was clearly several feet higher than the stern. The closer he was to the surface, even by a few feet, he reasoned, the greater his chances of being rescued, and so he tried to make his way toward the bow of the sunken ship.

  This was no easy task. Because of his unusual buoyancy, he was forced to adopt a hopping gait, not unlike the arrows when disturbed, gently bouncing along in a slow dream, his one lead shoe bump, bump, bumping with each protracted leap.

  Perhaps it was this noise that awakened the creature sleeping in the ship’s hold. It had grown fat over the last few weeks feeding on those who had gone down with this ship that it now called home, and so it was sluggish and sleepy. It slithered slowly toward the open cargo doors, pulling itself along with its long black tentacles. First one, then another sucker-covered appendage writhed up out of the hold, grasping the doors to either side and heaving its huge bulk up to the light.

  Of course, Conundrum was completely unaware of his imminent danger. The ladder up to the ship’s forecastle had been consumed in the fire; only the top three rungs remained, and these were far out of his reach. It occurred to him that he might use the copper kettle as a boost, and so he hop, hop, hopped toward it. If he could move the kettle over to the sterncastle’s damaged ladder, he might be able to reach the lowest rung.

  He was just stooping to grab the handle of the upturned kettle when he heard a noise like a rusty nail being pulled out of a board. While clambering out of the cargo hold, the monster shoved open one of the doors.

  Conundrum froze, his mouth gaping and eyes popping inside his helmet. His heart thundered in his chest, and his nose started to bleed again. His breast heaved in panic, he gulped the stale filtered air through lips suddenly dry as old parchment, a storm of bubbles erupted from his bladder-pack, and then he turned and saw the horror creeping from the ship’s hold. Lifting the side of the heavy copper cauldron, Conundrum crawled beneath it. It dropped down over him, shutting him in total darkness. His blood roared in his ears.

  Unfortunately for the gnome, the giant octopus was used to prying clams from their shells. Before it took up eating sailors, it had dined many a time on oysters pulled from their rocky beds. Slowly, silently, it crawled across the deck of the ship. It sent one tentacle probing toward the cauldron, feeling under its edge for a grip so it could flip it over and reveal the juicy meat inside.

  Conundrum screamed inside his fishbowl helmet when he saw a black tentacle lift the edge of the cauldron and writhe toward him. It was a high-pitched scream, a true blood-curdling yell, the scream of the rabbit in the wolfs jaws, the scream of the condemned mutineer as the point of a saber prods him off the end of the plank and into the shark-filled waters below. It nearly burst his eardrums. Conundrum jerked his foot out of his heavy iron shoe and used it as a weapon, smashing the intruding tentacle against the boards. The octopus jerked it back, leaving the tip of its tentacle stuck to the deck between Conundrum’s knees.

  Slowly now, the entire cauldron began to rise as though lifted from above. Conundrum dropped the shoe, and suddenly buoyant, found himself pressed against its underside of the cauldron. To his wonder, he found that an air pocket had formed here, and with each exhalation of bubbles it grew larger and the cauldron rose higher. It was only a few inches off the deck as yet, hut continuing to rise.

  Dimly sensing this, the giant octopus paused. The cauldron was now a foot above the deck, now two feet, now a yard, and steadily rising. The monster lunged forward, grasping at the empty deck with all eight of its tentacles, searching for the juicy meat that it knew was hiding there. Its suckers gripped the deck and tore loose the boards, searching for its victim, ignoring for the moment the cauldron rising above it as it would ignore the discarded shell of a hermit crab.

  Conundrum watched this violence occurring mere feet from the end of his nose. His instinct was to hold his breath, but when he did that, the cauldron began to slow in its ascent. With each breath, a cloud of bubbles erupted from his bladderpack, and it was the growing pocket of air that these created inside the upturned kettle that caused it to rise. As Conundrum clung desperately to the inside of the kettle, he realized that his only hope was to panic, perhaps even hyperventilate. He set himself to the task of breathing as rapidly as he could, and slowly, but ever more quickly, he rose above the deck of the ship inside the overturned cauldron.

  Higher and higher he climbed, until the entire length of the ship was visible below him. The giant octopus squeezed its massive bulk through the newly-torn hole in the deck. Still searching for the gnome, it vanished into the ship’s dark hold.

  The light grew brighter by stages, the water less murky. Shafts and beams of sunlight lanced downward, dancing as the waves rippled overhead. A shark, long and steely gray, slid by beneath him, unaware, perhaps thinking him some weird new jellyfish.

  Suddenly, his ascent stopped as though he had struck a wall. For one panicked moment, he thought something had caught him at last, and then he heard waves lapping against the outside of the cauldron. He had reached the surface.

  One problem remained-how to get out. There were still the sharks to consider, and Indestructible was probably hundreds of yards away from him. It might even have sailed away, thinking him lost forever, another victim of remorseless Chance (ever the greatest enemy of the gnomish people). It might even be sailing past him now, completely unaware that their crewmate floated beneath that curious copper kettle. If so, his only hope was that the kender had survived and was on deck to beg the commodore to stop and investigate a strange buoy bobbing on the surface.

  And then a new danger presented itself. The waves increased in size, and as they lapped against the kettle, it commenced rocking back and forth. If the waves grew any larger, the cauldron might tip over. Its bubble of air would then escape, and it would sink, leaving the gnome stranded on the surface, food for sharks. Conundrum pressed the palms of his hands against the inside of the kettle, trying to help keep its balance in the rising sea.

  Just as he was getting comfortable with the ever-shifting balance, something clanged against the kettle, almost upending him. He yelled, for he knew that the kettle had collided with the Indestructible. He could hear the commodore shouting curses at the helm. The cauldron, with Conundrum inside it, bumped down the length of the ship. Conundrum tried to call for help, but his voice i
nside his helmet inside the cauldron was so muffled that he doubted anyone could hear him.

  A pair of hooks suddenly splashed into the water beside him. They sank a moment, flashing in the water, and then jerked upward, snagging the lip of the cauldron and lifting it streaming from the sea.

  “You’ve got her!” Commodore Brigg shouted to the boom hand. “Swing her aboard now!”

  While one gnome cranked the winch that lifted the cauldron, another swung the boom round and deposited it upright on the aft deck, all done so quickly that there was still seawater sloshing inside it.

  “Good show!” the commodore shouted, then turned to Razmous, who stood at his side, still wearing his frogsuit and wringing water from his topknot. “You were right. It’s a fine cauldron. Should come in handy.”

  The kender nodded, shaking water from his ears.

  Then Conundrum stood up inside the cauldron, spilling water onto the deck. Razmous gaped proudly, and the boom operator screamed once, high and sharp, then fainted, certain he had seen a ghost.

  10

  After another fortnight’s sailing, the Indestructible made port in Kalaman, the halfway point of their journey. There, the crew purchased nine more large copper cauldrons to convert into Conundrum’s ascending-kettles, as he named his invention, for these held much promise as escape devices useful for vacating a permanently submerged submersible. Commodore Brigg granted everyone three days” shore leave, most of which was spent visiting relatives among the city’s resident population of gnomes and inspecting their rather quaint and antiquated collection of catapults. Really, they were rather behind the times, but that was to be expected with anyone living so far from Mount Nevermind. The kender spent the larger part of his time in the city jail, also visiting relatives.

  When the ship was stocked and provisioned for the journey to Flotsam, they bailed Razmous out, and the Indestructible set sail with a diminished crew of eighteen. A makeshift plaque honored Ensign Wigpillow as a fallen hero, while Gob was officially listed as missing in action. No one knew his fate for certain; they had waited a full day and seen no sight of him, even though the chaos beast was dead with the Indestructible’s UAEP in its belly. Conundrum, now the smallest member of the crew, was promoted yet again, this time to chief officer in charge of oilage.

  Now, in addition to his duties as first assistant cartographer, Conundrum had also to make sure the ship’s gears were properly oiled. This had been the meat of Gob’s job, and it was a nasty and uncomfortable job indeed, fit only for gully dwarves and their ilk.

  Still, the maze of gears, pipes and conduits lurking behind the Indestructible’s walls, beneath her floors, or sprawled across her ceilings did whet his professional curiosity to a certain extent. Everything, simply everything had to be oiled and greased to the nth degree-this fact being drubbed into his head by Chief Portlost-from the largest spring engine to the tiniest screw valve. The ship’s schematics were nearly as complicated as Razmous’s map of the sub-Ansalonian passage. Luckily, he had a few weeks in which to master his new business. They still had to sail round Nordmaar, the last northern cape of the continent of Ansalon, before turning south and making for the Blood Sea. If all went well, they wouldn’t have to submerge until then, and they hoped not at all before they reached Flotsam.

  Although the exterior of the ship was plated with heavy iron, the interior compartments were not unlike their below-deck counterparts on normal wooden sailing vessels. The officer’s cabins-located forward of the bridge on the main level-though not large, were comfortable and accommodating, paneled in rich browns and warm tans. Open fire was ever a danger aboard any ship, but the Indestructible was outfitted with several redundant fire-suppression systems, so for light they burned candles or small pottery lamps of whale oil. Here also was the mess and the kitchen, the fabrication shop for creating new devices and improvements-that work never stopped, and Doctor Bothy’s sick bay.

  The rest of the crew occupied community quarters beneath the bridge on the engineering level. There they slung their hammocks wherever there was a free space, among the machinery and stores that powered the ship and its crew. They also shared their chambers with the Indestructible’s main drive springs, as well as her ascending and descending spring, and the two UAEP tubes that ran the length of the ship. In the forward compartments on this level were the chambers where sails were stored. Aft was the engine control room and mechanism that diverted energy from the springs to the pumps to pressurize the UAEP tubes.

  Beneath this level was the bilge, where Ensign Gob had had his quarters before his untimely… whatever-it-was that happened to him. For the most part, Conundrum avoided the bilge, as there was little here requiring his attention other than the bilge-pump valves, which required oiling only every three days. Fore and aft of the bilge were the fore and aft ballast tanks. These were more important, their valves requiring oiling every day. When fully flooded, they began the ship on its descent beneath the waves.

  The days waxed longer as they sailed farther and farther north-longer and considerably warmer, until most everyone was wearing little more than a loincloth wound about their hips. At night, when duties allowed, they worked on the aft deck by lamplight, stripped down to their skivvies to take advantage of every breeze. These were the most pleasant hours of the voyage as far as Conundrum was concerned, these days spent lazing through tropical waters, watching dolphins play by moonlight, and eating as many deep-fried, flying fish as they could catch with their butterfly nets.

  A tiny tinkling noise wakened Sir Tanar Lobcrow from his reverie. He sat in the open window of his room at the Sailor’s Rest in Flotsam, thoughtfully sucking on a lime. The night was warm; silver-lined gray clouds raced across the setting moon. He wore only his undertrousers, letting the breeze play over his naked chest, and stretching his toes against the windowsill of his fourth-floor window. The sea gently lapped at the nearby shore, the slightly stale scent of Flotsam Bay competing with the rank odors rising from the alley below his window.

  At the noise, he started, realizing he had been hearing it for some time without noticing it. He looked round his bedchamber, still a little groggy from the balmy night and his woolgathering journey. A figure moved impatiently beneath the sheets of his bed, rolling over in annoyance at the disturbance of the ringing bell. Sir Tanar smiled at the figure, not lovingly, his teeth gleaming in the darkened room. Then he moved to his desk and removed the small box from its drawer. He opened the box as its last bell-like tones faded.

  “Good of you to answer my summons, Tanar,” the gruff feminine voice purred from the magical communication device.

  The figure on the bed rolled over again, crying out in her sleep, “Wha…? Sweetest, did you say something?”

  “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep,” the Thorn Knight muttered. The figure murmured something sleepily and rolled back to face the wall.

  “A woman, Tanar?” the Voice of the Night softly inquired.

  “It is not forbidden,” he said, turning his head to the side and blinking at the moonlight shining in through his window.

  “No, but revealing the secret of our communications most certainly is,” the Voice said in a dangerously calm voice. The steadiness of her tone spoke of her underlying anger.

  The Thorn Knight swallowed. A sudden lump of fear had risen in his throat. “She is sufficiently… subdued,” he said tersely.

  “And how did you manage that?” the Voice roared.

  Before he could answer, the woman sat up in the bed, clutching the sheets to her breast in terror. Her eyes rolled in her head as she stared round the room, confused, bewildered. “What? H-how…” she stammered. Her gaze fell on Tanar.

  “Who are you?” she cried, crawling to the head of the bed and pulling the sheets close to hide her nakedness. “How did I get here?” Her eyes darted in panicked confusion around the room, noting the open window, the closed door, the half-naked man, the small box on the desk.

  The Voice laughed mirthlessly from the magic
al device. Tanar stepped in front of the woman, trying to hide the box from her gaze, but she had already seen it.

  “What is that? Who is that?” she gurgled in terror as the sound of the bodiless voice.

  Suddenly, the laughter ceased, as though cut off with a knife. “Silence her, Tanar. Silence her now.”

  Without hesitation, he leaped across the bed, grabbed the woman by the arm, and dragged her to the floor. She lashed out with her free hand, clawing the Thorn Knight across the face, while at the same time sinking her teeth into the root of his thumb.

  Tanar snarled in pain and cuffed her with the back on his fist, stilling her protests for a moment. She fell limp at his feet, moaning.

  “She mustn’t be allowed to tell what she has seen,” the Voice urged.

  With a sigh, Tanar lifted her from the floor by her dark disheveled hair. She clutched weakly at the fingers knotted in her hair as he dragged her naked heels across the wooden floor. He set her in the windowsill with a thump. Still dazed by his blow and blinking stupidly, she tried to steady herself against the window frame. Tanar stooped, lifted her feet, and dumped her like a wheelbarrow out the window. She struck the filthy cobbles sixty feet below before she could think to open her mouth to scream.

  Tanar turned back to the magical communication device. His sheets lay stretched from the bed to the window, a long white accusing finger pointing the way to his crime. He balled them up and tossed them on the bed before returning to his seat at the desk.

  “It is done,” Tanar sighed, as he slid into the chair. “The woman will not speak.”

  “Well done, Tanar,” the Voice purred. “I hope her death does not interfere with your duties.”

  Tanar stiffened. “The proper authorities will be consulted. There is nothing to worry about. I know how to do my job.”