Conundrum Read online

  Much to his chagrin, Chief Portlost was chosen next. He acted as if he had no doubts that they would all drown the moment they stepped overboard. The commodore reminded him that his Life Quest was to record and detail the most extraordinary mishap the world has ever seen, to which the chief replied as the fish bowl was being placed over his head, “Yes, but I must live long enough to record it! And we have yet to invent the pen that can write underwater.”

  Next, surprisingly, the commodore chose Razmous Pinchpocket. Well, not surprisingly. The kender had been hopping on one foot trying to attract the commodore’s attention the entire time, all the while pointing at himself and crying in a tiny voice, “Oh, pick me! Please pick me.” He was out of his pouches, green vest, and leather leggings before the commodore could finish pronouncing his name and, even more astonishing, assigning him the command of the expedition.

  “Me? Commander!” Razmous squeaked, almost forgetting for a moment his delight at being allowed to try on the frogsuit, the inside of which he described as being “all squooshy,” accompanied by a sour expression that wrinkled up his nose and squinted his bright periwinkle eyes.

  “You are chief acquisitions officer, are you not?” the commodore barked. “You are in charge of all supply expeditions. You didn’t think you were coming along just for the fun, did you? This is the first land reconnaissance of the MNS Indestructible, the first use of Professor Hap-Troggensbottle’s marvelous new invention, the frogsuit, and the first test of your leadership.”

  “Of course!” the kender said, as seriously dutiful as he could. Then, when the commodore turned to assign the last two members of the expedition, he whispered to the professor, “Still, it’s gonna be fun.”

  To fill out the shore party, Commodore Brigg chose ensigns Merliguttal and Wigpillow, for they were the two largest gnomes on the ship, the strongest and the most capable of carrying the large barrel he was sending with them to collect fresh water. However, Ensign Merliguttal proved much too large to fit into the last frogsuit. In fact, the suit would hardly come up to his waist, and only then after it was stretched almost to splitting. The professor admitted that he had run out of material and so had to make a smaller suit.

  In the end, the only member of the crew small enough to fit into this small suit was Ensign Gob, the gully dwarf, and he was none too keen about allowing the gnomes to stuff him into the slithery garb. Loudly and vehemently he proclaimed, “Stinks unnatural!” Clearly, he thought they were feeding him to some kind of small black creature that was all mouth, for he screamed and wailed, thrashed and bit, as only a cornered gully dwarf can. Luckily, Doctor Bothy had plenty of anti-infection ointment, as gully dwarf bites can sometimes prove lethal if not properly treated.

  He seemed to calm somewhat once the fish bowl was placed over his head. Perhaps it was the closeness of his own body’s odors crowding inside the glass helmet that made him think of his gully dwarf warren and took his mind off the strangeness of his predicament. Or perhaps it was the duckfeet keeping him firmly rooted to the deck, unable to run. In any case, something resembling a smile spread through the thick, greasy mat of his beard. Then he fainted. Professor Hap had tightened his neck seal a bit too much, probably on purpose. Once loosened, he awoke in a better humor. “Do again,” he requested, pointing at his throat.

  They lined up along the edge of the deck, six in a row, and a queerer, more outlandish lot had never before been witnessed on the face of Krynn. They looked like something from another world, with their tight black suits and glass helmets, and backs swelling and deflating with each breath.

  “What about the sharks?” Sir Grumdish asked, his voice sounding tiny inside his helmet.

  “Yes, what about the sharks?” Chief Portlost concurred. “You haven’t forgotten about the sharks, have you?”

  “Of course not,” Professor Hap said as he stooped and opened the small, flat weapons box. From it, he took a strange device that set every gnomish heart palpitating with excitement. Its conglomeration of hoses and tubes, and its dangerous pointy end, looked most promising indeed.

  “What is that?” Razmous asked, intrigued.

  “UANP,” the professor answered. “Underwater Arrow of Normal Proportions. It works on the same principle of the UAEP, except it is considerably smaller. The arrow is loaded here-” he pointed to the dangerous end where a large steel arrowhead protruded. “Water is pumped in through the hoses using this hand pump,” he demonstrated, cranking out one of the tubes and pressing it back into place. He handed the weapon to Sir Grumdish, who eyed the strange device with an appraising glance. He hefted it and aimed along the length of the tube at a sharklike shadow passing near the ship.

  “The firing mechanism is here,” the professor said, pointing at a large red button on the side. “Be careful, though. You have only one shot, and I’ve had time to build only three.” So saying, he distributed the other two weapons to Chief Portlost and Ensign Wigpillow.

  “Gentlegnomes and kender,” Commodore Brigg intoned solemnly, addressing the members of the shore party. “Go with the blessings of Reorx, wherever he may be.” He saluted, thumping himself on the forehead and chest, then tugging his beard. The others returned the salute to the best of their abilities, banging their fists against their glass helmets. With a muffled scream, Ensign Gob tumbled overboard and sank out of sight.

  8

  Conundrum quickly-or as quickly as one can while wearing a thirty-pound shoe on each foot leaped overboard and followed Ensign Gob to the bottom. He feared that the gully dwarf might panic and try to tear off his glass helmet. But as he sank, he felt a similar terror building in his chest, which he struggled to control while at the same time feeling an almost overwhelming sense of marvel and wonder at seeing the mysterious depths of the sea. He had expected everything to be dim and murky, and indeed everything in the distance was lost in a gray-blue haze, but the things closest to him-the lacy fronds of coral, the billowy puffs of pale white jellyfish, the swirling clouds of tiny silver fish, and even the occasional grim-toothed shark cruising the reefs outer edges-appeared as distinct as though cut from paper and pasted to the outside of his helmet.

  For the first twenty feet of his descent, he held his breath, half from fear, half from awe, until he noticed a trail of bubbles rising up from beneath him. Glancing down, he saw the gully dwarf spiraling away below, arms wagging above his head. From the gully dwarfs bladderpack, the cloud of bubbles was spreading upward. Conundrum passed through the bubble-cloud, experiencing for a moment a queer tingling sensation, as if he were submerged in a glass of tricarbonated water (one of Doctor Bothy’s more recent attempts at a cure for hiccoughs). The fancy passed, and then he purposefully exhaled and created his own cloud of bubbles. He craned his head around inside the helmet to watch them ascend, and saw the duck-feet of his four companions not very far above his outstretched hands. The surface of the water, seen from below, glimmered like a pool of quicksilver, and the Indestructible hovered above them all, like a huge, dark whale pausing for a breath of air.

  A thump from below caught Conundrum’s attention. It was the gully dwarf, plumping down awkwardly in a puff of sand. Conundrum flapped his arms to keep from landing atop the gully dwarf. He settled to the bottom and quickly shuffled aside to make room for the others. Once submerged, his shoes didn’t feel quite so heavy as they had on board the ship. He gave Gob a reassuring smile and reached out to pat him on the shoulder. Gob, his eyes bugged-out either in wonderment or fear, gave a tentative smile back.

  The others floated down around him like so many strange birds in a dream, arms a-flutter to guide their descent. Their faces looked blue inside their helmets, and Razmous’s topknot dangled in his face. The kender expedition leader puffed and blew and crossed his eyes, but to no avail; his hair insisted on tickling his nose.

  “I wonder if I can get my hand up inside my fishbowl,” the kender said as he squirmed and tried to withdraw one arm into his frogsuit. Strangely enough, everyone could hear him, even if
it did sound as if he were talking through a pillow. When he spoke, his words were accompanied by an outrush of bubbles from his bladderpack.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Chief Portlost warned. The chief was more than a little green around the edges of his heard, and his eyes looked large and bulging with fear behind his glass helmet.

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s just get to shore and stop the nonsense,” Sir Grumdish snarled as he fingered his UANP and eyed a shark that had approached to investigate the strange new visitors to its territory.

  “We can’t go without-” Razmous began, but then a large barrel filled with ballast stones dropped on his foot. Only his heavy, lead-lined duckfeet shoes prevented broken toes.

  Conundrum unhooked the rope used to lower the barrel from the ship, while Sir Grumdish and Ensign Wig-pillow tipped it off the kender’s foot. They rolled it over on its side and dumped out enough of the ballast stones to make it float, buoyed by its wooden slats. It hovered in the water before them, as though in a dream. Ensign Gob was assigned to push it.

  They set out, climbing up a long winding valley between two towering coral reefs. A modest current pushed against them as they walked, and their heavy boots made for slow going. The seafloor here was of old gray coral, ground away by the steady current of the inflowing stream, while white sand filled all the reefs’ hollows and crevasses. Wherever there was sand, there were small dark spiny urchins, like little pincushions dropped by some seamstress in her fright, and sometimes they came across an old bare bone, or part of a skull, sticking up out of the sand. Razmous found a bony finger with a glimmering golden ring still dangling from it, but he had no pouches in which to tuck it away for safe keeping.

  To either side, long valleys lay between the reefs, stretching hack into the blue haze like aisles in a darkened temple. In these, they came across the wrecks of ships. Some were ancient and worm-eaten, half overgrown by the wild luxuriant coral. Others appeared newly sunk. Were it not for the jagged holes in their sides or bows, they might even now be running before the wind in some faraway sea. Seeing the dark gaping mortal wounds of these ships filled everyone except the kender with a strange loathing and horror, as if by looking too long they might glimpse the pale cold corpse of some doomed sailor peering out, his flesh pecked by fishes, his eyes still staring wide at some ancient peril. They hurried on as quickly as they could.

  Still, there was many a marvel to behold, and despite the sharks, the greatest danger they faced was losing their leader to an aqueous version of wanderlust. Luckily, Razmous still had on his lead shoes, or he might have escaped them altogether and vanished down some dark coral cave where giant eels were waiting to devour him. Surely few other kender had ever seen anything quite so marvelous and lived to tell the tale.

  Yet all found themselves filled with an almost kenderish childlike delight. They saw jellyfish that so resembled the underside of a Palanthian lady in her hoop skirts and frowsy pantaloons that Conundrum blushed to see them and nearly fogged up the inside of his helmet. In a. deep coral grotto, Razmous pointed out a giant clam that could have easily swallowed him whole, and very nearly did. They saw corals and fish of every size, shape, and description, from huge man-swallowing anemones to finger-long shrimp that carried tiny hammers instead of claws. The shrimp beat these minute weapons against the stone with a startling crack whenever anyone approached too closely. Colors were strangely muted, but their eyes quickly adjusted and began picking up subtle variations in the grays and blues of corals that were almost as beautiful as if they had been vibrantly alive with every color of the rainbow.

  What interested them most were the sharks. There were dozens of them, of every shape and kind. They saw the long, flat docile kind that were nearly invisible against the sand, and only spurted away when you were almost stepping on them. They saw the square-snouted toothy kind that circled them endlessly, perhaps wondering if frogsuited gnomes-and kender, but likely not gully dwarves-were good to eat. But mostly there were the small, thin ones than moved through the water like dragonflies in a lazy summer glade in the woods. These had white tips on the ends of their fins, and long curved tails like pirate swords. Once, they spotted a monstrously big shark, but it ignored them, swimming slowly over their heads with its toothless maw gaping wide as a beer barrel. It disappeared into the bluish haze of distance, headed out to the open sea on business of its own.

  Nevertheless, and despite the distractions, they eventually reached shallower water. The light grew by stages brighter and less blue, and things about them began to take on color. The sand, they found, was not white but a peculiar shade of tan, like the hide of a lion. In the shallows they encountered numerous skates and huge dark rays like magical underwater flying carpets. There were also a good deal more of the square-nosed toothy sharks, and these were more aggressive or curious than their reef cousins. They swam closer, and one even bumped Sir Grumdish from behind. Perhaps it smelled his fish bladder breathing apparatus. Certainly the six divers did. They had all had their fill of its faint but nonetheless fishy odour, and were none too glad to unstrap their helmet seals and breathe fresh air again once they had come safely to the shore. They clambered out of the surf and collapsed on the beach, dragging their water barrel after them. Ensign Gob stumbled all over his duckfeet, fell facedown on the sand, and couldn’t get back up. Conundrum tried to help the gully dwarf, only to have him slip through his fingers like melted butter and fall onto his back. The gully dwarf lay there, thrashing like an overturned turtle.

  “What’s the matter with Gob?” Razmous asked.

  “He’s like a wet bar of soap,” Conundrum answered as he struggled to lift the gully dwarf to his feet. “I can’t get hold of him. Help me.”

  Together, they managed it, but only by lifting Gob by his helmet. When wet, their frogsuits exuded some peculiar, odorless oil, probably to help the diver slip more easily through the water. But once dry, the suits returned to their normal-if it could be called normal-rubbery state. Conundrum and Razmous helped Gob out of his lead shoes.

  Once they had all removed their helmets, duckfeet, and bladderpacks, the five intrepid explorers-and the gully dwarf-gathered around the upended barrel. Three hundred yards from shore, the Indestructible appeared as a dark hump in the water, crawling with activity. Inland, the silent hills rose up wave upon shingled wave. Where the stream cut through them, a wide band of greenery crowded either bank, softening the grim browns and stony grays. In the sand of the beach were the deep, cloven hoofprints of numerous goats, as well as what appeared to be the soft pugmarks of a prowling leopard.

  “I say we get our water and be gone,” Chief Engineer Portlost said warily, taking the initiative. “The stream is as fresh here as it is inland. No use hauling that barrel over hill and dale when water is close at hand.” He had not been pleased at the sight of the leopard footprints, and besides, he didn’t like land anyway. He was a seafaring gnome, and had spent the last half of his life walking the heaving decks of ships at sea. Being ashore made him nervous.

  “Nay, we should explore a mite,” Sir Grumdish said, “discover the lay of the land, and search for fresh meat. We’ve all the day before us, plenty of time to set some snares and try to catch a sheep or two. I know I’d not turn my nose up at a bite of broiled mutton, no offense to Cooky’s skillet meat, may his burns heal swiftly.”

  Though he had brought neither sword nor dagger, the UANP weapon gave Sir Grumdish a comforting sense of security. He did not doubt the device’s ability to skewer a beastie at a hundred paces, and he was simply dying to fire it at something, be it shark a-sea or leopard ashore. Or even a large and rather famous blue dragon, if it came to that. He had not forgotten that they were now within the domains of Khellendros.

  “I agree,” Conundrum said. “We do have all day.”

  Razmous smiled as he shrugged off the shoulder straps of his bladderpack. “Well, you know how I feel, and as Commodore Brigg placed me in command of this expedition, I say we h
ave a look around. Agreed?”

  Chief Portlost muttered some expletive about putting a kender in charge and flung off his bladderpack. The rest followed his example, except Ensign Gob, who had not even removed his glass helm, for he seemed to enjoy inhaling his own vapors. He left his helmet seal tightly cinched, baring his teeth at anyone who offered to help him out of his diving gear. The morning sun was already growing hot on their black frogsuits, and they gazed with longing at the cool shade promised by the gently swaying palms and tall hedges of thorny willow.

  The stream leaped and tumbled over the hills” sun-bleached stones, gushing in torrents over small falls, or flowing deep and cold through still forests of tall reeds. Its water was icy cold, indicating that it probably emerged from some spring deep in the hills rising to the east. It entered the sea down a long ebullient fall of many steps, so that the sea’s tides could not enter and make the water brackish. But farther inland, it paused in its journey to spread in a wide bean-shaped green pool bordered by papyrus reeds along its curving shore. On the side on which the five intrepid explorers-six, counting their gully dwarf-found themselves, the land sloped down swiftly through willow forests to the lake’s deep shores.

  Here, in a sheltered, sunlit cove, they discovered a sight that filled them with wonder and curiosity, if not a niggling twinge of fear. High in the forest where they hid, they could not he seen, and so they stood and watched it without fear of discovery. But still, it was such a horrid thing, they could not help hut feel a quickening of the pulse and a tightening of the chest.

  Except, of course, for Razmous. Kender are born without the self-preserving instinct of fear. A monstrosity such as this was nothing less than an opportunity for grand adventure. Even if it did have three large, egg-shaped eyes-the largest one in the middle of its forehead-and a single scythe-like horn sweeping back from the center of its skull. Even its skin was flaming red, and steam rose around its thighs where it stood almost hip deep in the lake. Still, for a kender that was no reason not to creep closer for a brief examination of the creature. Even if it was easily sixteen feet tall, with legs like tree trunks and biceps as big as the average dwarf, that was no reason to assume even more interesting details couldn’t he spotted upon nearer inspection.