Conundrum Read online

  “Engaging descending flowpellar, aye.”

  “Come about due north, Mr. Snork.”

  “Coming about due north, aye.”

  “Secure stations.”

  “Hull integrity secure. Peerupitscope undamaged.”

  “Portholes holding, sir!”

  Above them, the dragon roared again in frustration and anger.

  17

  The Blood Sea of Istar seemed a different place entirely than what they had crossed but two months earlier. With the first hint of autumn came the season of stormy weather. Squalls were frequent on the sea now, rising up black on the horizon and catching the ship before they knew what was happening. Indestructible was not designed to weather such weather, and those on board suffered cruelly during their passage north, especially Conundrum, Sir Grumdish, and the Thorn Knight, who were not sailors by trade. They might have submerged and run beneath the waves, hut the commodore wanted to reserve their strength for the real work of subnavigating the continent. It wouldn’t do them any good at all to use up all their air bottles before they began the last stage of their journey. They dove only when the weather gave them no other choice, like when they encountered a typhoon on the fifth day out.

  In any case, they still had to surface from time to time so that Snork could take readings and plot their course. The Blood Sea was a vast and featureless place, with no islands in its midst to guide a sailor. Not many sailors ever sought out the middle of the Blood Sea. Most who sailed these waters were searching either for the nearest port or a fat, lumbering merchant ship. Now that the Maelstrom had disappeared, few knew or even cared to know exactly where it had once been. Most maps drawn before the Chaos War failed to pinpoint the center of the Blood Sea at all. The old cartographers left this area blank, or drew in a large whirlpool and surrounded it with dire warnings. The main problem was that the location of the Maelstrom varied by as much as a hundred leagues, depending on which map one consulted. Of all the maps of the Blood Sea that the gnomes had borrowed or purchased, only the kender’s map of the subnavigational course of the MNS Polywog purported to show where it once lay.

  It was to this place that Snork attempted to navigate the Indestructible, and this was no easy task. The weather played havoc with his calculations, both in the way the wind drove them helter-skelter across the sea whenever they ran “on top"-as they called it when the ship sailed on the surface-but also in how the clouds hid the sun for days on end. He navigated primarily by calculating the position of the sun above the horizon. He compared these readings with the time of the day and the date on various charts and arrays compiled by his family over many generations at sea, and from these he was able to determine their position anywhere on Krynn to within a league or two. He hoped.

  The only good thing about the weather was that it kept the pirates away.

  Professor Hap-Troggensbottle spent these last days sequestered in his quarters, perfecting some experiment or other. In those rare moments when he emerged to visit the galley or the head, he spoke to no one and no one spoke to him, for he had rather a crazed look in his eye.

  That is, no one spoke to him-except Razmous. The kender seemed to regard the professor’s silence as something of a personal challenge to his kenderhood. He lurked in wait many an hour outside the professor’s quarters just to catch a glimpse of the inside of the room whenever he emerged, and to engage him in conversation about his experiments or anything else that came to mind. One time, he even followed the poor professor into the head and prattled on about the peculiar antics of his uncle, Morgrify Pinchpocket, before the commodore dragged him out and gave the kender a good dressing-down.

  Occasionally, when he wasn’t feeling as though his stomach was about to perform a ballet, Conundrum was able to draw Razmous away to discuss the map of the subcontinental passages. At other times, Conundrum spent his hours locked away in the cabin he shared with his cousin, poring over Snork’s books on navigation and the sea. The activities and operations of the ship were of little interest to him. He’d had his fill of seamanship during his stint as chief officer in charge of oilage. But navigation was another matter entirely. As a member of the guild of puzzles, mazes, and that sort of thing, the study of charting courses on the open sea fascinated him.

  The least sailorly of them all, Sir Tanar, spent most of his time curled into a ball of misery in his cabin, his face as green as the kender’s vest. He marked the time by the ensign who entered his cabin every twelve hours to feed the glowworms in his berth’s glowwormglobe. He almost imagined he could hear the tiny worms munching on their breakfasts and dinners of moss, and this made him all the more ill. But he was too weak to protest.

  His cabin was ridiculously small, located as it was in the bow of the ship above the Toaster. There almost wasn’t room for him to stretch his hammock, and before he’d succumbed to seasickness, every time he stood up, he smacked his head on some beam or pipe. Sometimes, when the ship was being tossed about particularly violently by some storm, he imagined that he was dead and buried in a gnomish spring-driven coffin. The porthole caused him the most grief. Through it, he had a front seat to the worst heavings of the sea when they surfaced. When submerged, he witnessed the bounty of the sea in all its loathsome varieties, from grim-toothed sharks grinning through the shreds of their latest meal to stomach-churning jellyfish splattered and oozing across the porthole’s glass. It was enough to give the most seasoned of assassins the heaves.

  After three days and nights, the Indestructible finally managed to crawl out from beneath the typhoon, and at dawn the commodore ordered the ship surfaced and aired out. Those who had suffered the most from seasickness received a few hours of much-needed rest, as did the ship’s springs and gears, for they had worked without pause for most of those three long days and nights. Lines and poles were brought out and rigged along the aft deck so that the galley staff could catch fresh fish for supper. A keg of beer was broached, and for the first time in many days, the professor, never one to miss out on beer, emerged from his cabin. Sir Grumdish practiced his swordplay, even teaching the commodore a few tricks with the cutlass.

  Meanwhile, Navigator Snork stood in the conning tower and took fresh bearings on the newly risen sun. He then consulted his navigational charts and maps, and after checking the position of the sun once more, announced loudly that they had arrived. He estimated that the ruins of Istar lay somewhere directly below them. A great cheer went up from the ship, and in the galley Sir Tanar, drinking tarbean tea-the first thing he’d been able to keep down in days-wondered at the commotion.

  “We’ve made it, sir!” the cook said as he poured the Thorn Knight another cup.

  “Made what?” Sir Tanar asked.

  “Istar, sir! Bless me. The commodore says we’ll dive tomorrow!”

  At these words, Sir Tanar’s eyes narrowed, and the words to a charm spell sprang to mind, but the magic felt sluggish and unwieldy in his veins. “I’d like a word with the commodore in my cabin,” he said. “Will you tell him?”

  “Aye,” the cook said, running his bandaged hand lovingly over the battered pewter pot in which he had brewed tarbean tea for over forty years now.

  “Dive to the bottom of the chasm?” the commodore snorted. “You’re mad. Everyone knows it’s bottomless.”

  “But it might not be,” Sir Tanar said in oily tones. “It might lead somewhere interesting.”

  “Where?” The commodore laughed. “The Abyss?”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious?” the Thorn Knight asked.

  “I am!” Razmous shouted from behind the closed door.

  “No! I’ll listen to no more talk of the Abyss,” the commodore barked. “This ship is subnavigating the continent, and that’s that. If you don’t like it, we can put you off here and now. My orders are to take you along, and there’s nothing in there about listening to your ideas. If you give me any more trouble, you’ll be feeding the sharks before you can snap your fingers.”

  The words of a d
efensive spell came to Tanar’s mind, but he held them. His magical communications device was stored in its box inside a crate across the room, and without it, his spell had little chance of success.

  “Keep that in mind,” Commodore Brigg finished as he opened the door.

  Razmous tumbled into the room. The commodore stepped over the red-faced kender and strode away.

  Conundrum entered immediately after the commodore was gone and helped Razmous to his feet. Without a word, Razmous bowed and hurried after the commodore. Conundrum started to follow, but Sir Tanar clutched at his sleeve.

  Ever since that day at the Sailor’s Rest, when the Thorn Knight had enspelled him with a single word, Conundrum had felt uncomfortable around Sir Tanar. The wizard was the first human with whom he’d had any regular dealings, and he found he didn’t much care for their ways. He thought humans dull and stupid because they spoke so slowly, yet they were cunning-as the snake is cunning. He stared at the tops of his shoes.

  The Thorn Knight eyed the gnome with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. Over the last few days, he’d learned more about gnomes that he had ever wanted. Yet just when he thought he had them pegged, they went and did something unexpected. That made them wily opponents. The safest bet, and his plan all along, had been to catch them sleeping and, after subduing the leaders with his magic, either force the others to do his bidding or kill them outright and take over the ship himself-after they reached the chasm to the Abyss, of course. But he had abandoned this plan at about the same time he became seasick, for two reasons. First, he was beginning to believe that gnomes never slept. Second, it became painfully obvious that he would never be able to operate the ship on his own. He needed the gnomes” help, but he wasn’t quite sure how to convince them to do what he wanted. He certainly couldn’t charm them all with his magic.

  But it occurred to him that a mutiny might serve his purposes. If he could begin to sow dissension among the crew, doubts about their voyage, he might be able to wrest command from the commodore and take the ship where he wanted. A little magical intervention would help his cause along. Every mutiny started with one member of the crew. Just one.

  “Please stay a moment, Conundrum,” Tanar begged in a sincere tone as he clutched the gnome’s sleeve. “I’ve wanted a word with you these many days since we put to sea, but there hasn’t been a chance to speak. Close the door, if you would.”

  Reluctantly, Conundrum did as the Thorn Knight bade. As he closed the door, he felt the Knight’s eyes boring into his back. He turned and placed his back to the door.

  “Come now, Conundrum, I know you do not trust me,” Sir Tanar cajoled. “Can we not forget that little incident in my room when I cast that spell on you? You were about to throw a priceless treasure out the window. I had to stop you. Will you not accept my apology?”

  “I forgive you,” Conundrum answered quickly, but without raising his eyes.

  “That’s right. It was all a misunderstanding,” the Thorn Knight said, a toothy smile spreading across his face, “and I want you to know that I’m not here to cause trouble-or try to steal your secrets, either. You do believe me, don’t you?”

  Conundrum didn’t reply. He tried to think of somewhere else he needed to be so that he could leave without offending or angering the Thorn Knight. He was sure it wouldn’t be a good idea to anger Sir Tanar.

  “I am a wizard, you see,” Sir Tanar continued. “I seek knowledge, like yourself. Gnomes and wizards are not so different. Yes, we are very much alike, you and I. We could be friends. Don’t you think we could be friends?”

  Conundrum shrugged.

  “I want you to understand how sincere I am,” the Thorn Knight said. Suddenly, the wizard’s powerful hand clutched Conundrum under the chin. The gnome started in surprise and banged his head against the door. The room swam, and from the center of it the Thorn Knight’s dark eyes started out like two lamps through a fog. Conundrum rubbed his bruised pate and tried to shake the cobwebs from his mind, but Sir Tanar’s eyes held him.

  “You do understand that I want to be your friend,” Sir Tanar said.

  Slowly, Conundrum assented. He felt it impossible to refuse. His suspicions of the wizard dropped away, and now when he thought about them, he wondered how he could have been so silly. He and the wizard were very much alike, both passengers on this ship, both seeking to fulfill a Life Quest. He smiled.

  “That’s better,” Sir Tanar said as sweetly as he could manage. “You’d better let Doctor Bothy take a look at your head. Say nothing to him about our meeting. It is better if the others did not know of our friendship. They might not understand.”

  Conundrum agreed and opened the door. He ran into his cousin, who was coming to look for him. A strange expression crossed Snork’s face, seeing Conundrum exit the Thorn Knight’s chambers, but he quickly let it pass. He hurried forward, reaching out to clutch Conundrum by the arms.

  “What is it?” Sir Tanar asked as he emerged behind Conundrum, hearing a commotion break out in the galley down the hall. Sailors and officers alike rushed out, hurriedly downing mugs of tarbean tea or stuffing the last bites of pie into their mouths as they rushed to their stations.

  “A pirate galley!” Snork exclaimed. “Minotaurs!”

  “Not-” Conundrum began.

  “Yes! It’s the same one!”

  18

  A thunderous blow rattled the ship, nearly knocking the gnomes off their feet. Sir Tanar toppled backward into his cabin and fell over his hammock, hitting the deck with a thud. Conundrum and Snork clutched one another and stared about in fright.

  “Have we been rammed?” Doctor Bothy cried as he staggered out of sick bay.

  “I don’t think so,” Snork said.

  At that moment, the commodore’s commanding voice shouted down from the conning tower, “Prepare to dive! All hands, prepare to dive!”

  Another blow resounded off the iron hull, staggering the Indestructible’s occupants. Snork and Conundrum rushed to the bridge, where they found the commodore sealing the hatch. “Ahead full! Hard to starboard!” he shouted.

  As the commodore’s commands were answered and the ship lurched forward in the water, they turned and looked through the forward porthole.

  Still some distance away, but near enough to see its monstrous crew scurrying about on its decks, the pirate galley cut a swath through the waves. Its two great sails of red and white stripes bellied full with the wind. There was no way the Indestructible could outrun it. Their only hope was to dive.

  Sir Grumdish stood beside the helm as Snork took over from the pilot. Sir Grumdish held a dagger in his fist, his knuckles whitening around the hilt as he stared out through the porthole at the approaching ship. Even as he watched, a large catapult on the bow of the minotaur ship loosed a large boulder.

  “Flood the forward ballast tanks and engage the descending flowpellars!” Snork shouted. The ship immediately began to nose under the waves. The boulder careened off the conning tower, jarring everyone to his teeth. Sir Grumdish loosed a string of curses and shook his daggered fist at the pirates.

  Indestructible continued her descent even as the minotaur vessel drew closer. Water lapped against the porthole, and the gnomes felt and heard the sudden quiet of the deep close round them. Commodore Brigg ordered the Peerupitscope raised. He placed his eye to the eyepiece, then swiveled round until he found what he was looking for.

  He started back in surprise. “Lower the Peerupitscope! Quickly!” he shouted. The long metal tube slid down. “Brace for impact!”

  “What’s wrong?” Snork asked.

  His answer came in the form of a long painful wail of metal against metal, of copper keel scraping against iron hull. The Indestructible lurched violently to starboard, nearly capsizing and sending the crew and everything else that wasn’t tied down flying off walls, pipes, and each other. Suddenly, the ship righted, tossing everyone about once more.

  Through it all, Commodore Brigg managed to keep his hold on the Peerupitsc
ope. As the rest of the crew members crawled back to their posts, he shouted for it to be raised again. After a few moments, it shot up, and he peered through it, his mouth set in a grim line.

  “Sir Grumdish,” he said.

  “Aye, Commodore?”

  “Load the UAEPs.”

  “Aye, Commodore!” Sir Grumdish exclaimed with obvious relish.

  “Navigator, come about on my mark,” the commodore shouted. “Chief Portlost, prepare for a crash ascent, and give me everything you’ve got. We’re going to sink that ship, if it’s the last thing we do.”

  As the crew prepared for battle, the glowworms in the glowwormglobes hanging from the overhead pipes reacted to the excitement, changing from their normal cool blue light to an angry blood red. Professor Hap-Troggensbottle stumbled onto the bridge, the edges of his beard black and smoking.

  “What happened to you?” the commodore asked as he maneuvered the Indestructible into attack position.

  “Small mishap. Nothing to worry about. What’s going on? Are we under attack?” the professor said.

  “We were. Now we’re the ones doing the attacking!” Sir Grumdish answered fiercely.

  “Stand by the Toaster!” the commodore shouted. “Prepare to ascend. When we reach the surface, we’ll give “em both UAEPs, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll stave a hole below her waterline she won’t likely forget!”

  “Aye, Commodore!” Sir Grumdish cheered.

  Conundrum joined Snork at the wheel now, and together they peered out the porthole at the murky water of the Blood Sea of Istar. Snork made small adjustments to their course according to the directions of the commodore, who kept his eye glued to the Peerupitscope. The Indestructible grew quiet as, with everything ready, the crew members waited at their stations.

  Sir Tanar crept from his chamber and down the corridor to the bridge. The sudden silence, after so much commotion, filled him with foreboding. He found the gnomes standing dutifully at their posts, washed by the eerie red glow of the glowwormglobes, only their goggling eyes and quivering beards showing any outward sign of their excitement.