Conundrum

Chapter
27

Gradually, the thrashing legs grew weaker and weaker until at last they were still, with only an occasional twitch to warn the gnomes from approaching too closely. Not that any of them would have approached too closely-not at first anyway. But Doctor Bothy and Professor Hap-Troggensbottle had to sit on Razmous to keep him away from the huge, black creature.

“It looks dead!” he wailed. “What’s the danger in just a little peek?”

“That’s what you said about the dragon’s egg, and look what happened there!” Sir Grumdish barked from inside his armor.

“I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

Meanwhile, with dagger drawn, Commodore Brigg crept near enough to touch the beast’s shell with his outstretched hand. He brushed his fingertips over the rough, pitted surface of one of the creature’s legs, then leaped away, but the beast remained as still as the dead. “It doesn’t feel like a crab shell,” he whispered as he examined the tips of his fingers. “Hello! Is this rust?”

As if in answer, a door in the upturned belly of the beast clanged open, and out from it crawled a bedraggled figure dressed in rags. Long, unkept strands of white hair sprouted in a halo around his enormous bald brown head, and a long, thick, filthy beard dangled to his knees. Taking no notice of the astonished crew of the Indestructible, he began to curse and stomp around on the crab’s belly, waving a wrench at the still-twitching legs.

With a little cry of surprised joy, Commodore Brigg leaped onto the crab’s belly. The diminutive figure stopped waving his wrench and eyed the commodore warily. The two stared eye to eye for a few moments. As the light of recognition slowly kindled in the wretched creature’s eyes, his bearded lip trembled, and he dropped his wrench with a clink.

Then the two were in each other’s arm, weeping and roaring like drunken dwarves who just won some money, pummeling each other on the back and madly tugging at their beards.

“Hawser, you old sea dog!” the commodore cried.

“Brigg, you old barnacle scraper!” the bedraggled gnome answered.

Slowly, the others gathered nearer, still cautious of the strange crab-creature, but their curiosity of it and its peculiar owner gradually got the better of them. Tanar rose up from the water and stared at the crab in surprise. Razmous stood knee-deep in the pool and wrung out his topknot, a bemused smile on his wrinkled brown face. Sir Grumdish opened his belly visor and stared out suspiciously. Doctor Bothy shook with hiccoughs and chewed the ends of his beard.

Conundrum approached the crab and examined its rusty surface. Spying something beneath the green patina covering its surface, he began to rub at it with the no longer white sleeve of his robe. After a few moments, he had removed enough of the thin verdigris to reveal letters painted in bright red: MNS POLY.

“The Polywog!" he gasped.

“What is left of it,” the bedraggled gnome croaked. “Forgive me. It has been some time since I last spoke. My voice is a little raw.”

“Then you are-” the professor began.

“Captain Hawser of the MNS Polywog,” the commodore said.

“Last survivor of that ill-fated expedition,” Hawser added.

“And my brother!” Commodore Brigg finished, fresh tears rolling down his bearded cheeks. “It was my Life Quest to find him.”

Captain Hawser turned and gripped his long-lost sibling by the shoulders. “So how did you find me?” he cried.

The commodore then described their journey from Sancrist, leaving out few details and commending with undisguised pride the bravery and resourcefulness of his crew. His narrative was helped along by various supportive exclamations, clarifications, and corrections by the kender and other members of the crew. When the commodore came to their indecision in the cavern as a result of some confusion over the maps, Captain Hawser nodded his head in appreciation of their predicament.

“Aye, we had the same trouble, and that’s how we ended up here, if you know what I mean, which I am sure you do. It seems we misplaced that portion of the map before ever we reached Winston’s Tower, and therefore your cartographer must have made a copy of the incomplete copy of the incomplete original that we left there, if you know what I mean.”

Nodding, the commodore finished his narrative, telling of the encounter with the dragon, and their crash landing on the beach here. Once again, Captain Hawser sympathized. “Lucky you had them iron plates on your hull,” he said. “Polywog was covered in bronze and stood nary a chance against the claws of the dragon. We followed the same light as you did, being lost like yourselves, and the dragon was waiting for us, seemingly. She tore the ship to shreds, half my crew drowned, dead, or eaten. The survivors escaped to here.”

“How?” the commodore asked. “Surely you didn’t make that swim through the flooded passages.”

“Nay, no gnome could do such a thing without some kind of underwater breathing apparatus like that one invented by your professor there,” Hawser said, acknowledging Professor Hap-Troggensbottle. “But you forget we had a dwarf with us-old Brambull. He found a passage linking the city of the giants with Charynsanth’s lair. Of course, the giants had blocked it up to keep the dragon out of their city, but we managed to squeeze through the cracks.”

At these words, Sir Tanar perked up. Noticing his interest, Conundrum edged closer to the Thorn Knight but said nothing to him as yet.

“Giants?” the professor said in alarm. “You mean there are giants living here?”

“Well, only just a few, if you know what I mean. Charynsanth got most of them before they blocked up that passage I told you about,” Captain Hawser explained.

“Who is Charynsanth?” Sir Tanar asked.

Captain Hawser’s eyes narrowed as he glared at the Thorn Knight. He shot a glance at his brother, as though seeking his approval before speaking. Commodore Brigg nodded, albeit reluctantly.

“Charynsanth is the red dragon,” Hawser explained. “That’s her name, or at least that’s what the giants call her. I don’t know what her real name is, as I haven’t bothered to ask.”

“How do you know what the giants call her?” the Thorn Knight pressed.

“Because I overheard them. It’s not been easy living here these-how long is it, two years? — without overhearing their conversations from time to time. They do holler so. You’d think they were stone deaf, if you know what I mean.”

“Go on,” the commodore urged while glaring at the Thorn Knight.

“So we escaped here, like I said, only it wasn’t much better here than in the dragon’s lair, what with the giants and all snatching up my crew and whopping them over the head with their big clubs and eating me pretty much out of the last of my command. Before I knew what was happening or how to hide from them, I was the last survivor. That’s when I found that little beach. It was littered with wreckage from the Polywog. You may not have noticed, but there is a deep hole in the bottom of that pool. Bottomless I reckon it is, and the water from the dragon’s lair flows through that passage that you navigated before swirling down that hole. The current carried bits and pieces of the Polywog along and threw them up on the shore. I gathered what I could and built this crab. When it was watertight, I planned to use it to escape down the hole. I don’t know where it leads, but anything is better than trying to get past Charynsanth. I think you noticed how sensitive she is about folks wandering around in her lair.”

“But what if the hole doesn’t lead anywhere?” Conundrum asked.

“It’s got to go somewhere," Captain Hawser said. “Where is the water going to? What’s drawing that current from the dragon’s lair? I ask you. Personally, I think it leads all the way through to the other side of Krynn.”

“Maybe it leads to the Abyss,” Razmous speculated. “Hey! Maybe that’s what happened to the Maelstrom! Maybe it didn’t just disappear. Maybe it moved here.”

Sir Tanar snorted in derision, then grew thoughtful. He clasped his hands behind his back and began to wander away, brows knit and lost in thought. Conundrum followed him.

“Hey! I wouldn’t go too far,” Captain Hawser said. “Unless you want to meet a giant or two, if you know what I mean. As a matter of fact, we’d best get underground before they show up.”

“I thought we were already underground,” Razmous said.

“We are, but there are burrows beneath the city that are too small for the giants to enter. It seems they had giant-sized rats, too, what made the burrows. Some of you help me flip this crazy machine over,” Captain Hawser said as he jumped down.

Working together, the crew of the Indestructible managed to right the crab and set it on its spindly iron legs. These seemed constructed of bits and pieces of the Polywog’s driveshafts welded together-along with various other bars and tubes that did not bear the mark of Mount Nevermind forges. As Captain Hawser climbed up inside his machine, Chief Portlost asked, “Where did you get these other iron parts, and how did you manage to weld them without a forge?”

After ascending into the crab’s mechanical belly, the captain hung his bearded head out to answer him. “As for the welding, there are lava pits everywhere, and the iron can be got if you’re willing to scrounge for it. This is-or was-a city of giants. Their old, rusty, castoff weapons are everywhere. But if you’d like to see more, climb inside. I’ll show you around.”

“May I?” the chief asked delightedly.

“Please,” Hawser said. “And Commodore, have your crew follow me to a place of safety. You have to hide around here when the geysers start venting. They’ll be perking up any moment now. Mostly, that’s when the giants come out. Mostly. They like the heat, and the steam hides them.”

Inside his clanking, creaking, mechanical crab, Captain Hawser led them by a circuitous route down broad alleys and through wide courtyards. Confusing though their course seemed, Conundrum realized that the captain was leading them back to the beach where the Indestructible lay wrecked on the shore. When he mentioned this, the captain said that the giants did not often patrol near the beach because of the water. The giants, he explained with his head hanging out of the bottom of the crab-Chief Portlost was, to his everlasting delight, now driving the contraption-had an intense dislike, almost a fear, of water in any form other than scalding steam.

“And the giants are at war with the dragon?” Conundrum asked.

“Aye, son, that they are. Though nowadays they are content to keep the passages between their two lairs blocked. Though they are strong and have the advantage of numbers, Charynsanth is too powerful for them.”

The captain’s knowledge of the subterranean city proved invaluable. They might have wandered for months before discovering some of the forgotten byways through which he led them, and as he had promised, here they found titanic weapons of forged iron lying everywhere, many of them reduced by the steamy atmosphere to huge piles of rust. What was more, as he had predicted, geysers throughout the city began to erupt during their journey, filling the streets and alleys with a warm, dense fog that obscured sight to within just a few feet-fog thick enough to hide even a giant.

Finally, they turned into a building no different than the hundreds they had already passed. The interior of the building was expansive and echoing but dark as a minotaur's heart. Captain Hawser steered his mechanical crab into a far corner of the chamber. The belly hatch popped open and he swung out, followed by Chief Portlost. Loosing a rope from a small boulder, he dropped a gigantic tapestry over the machine, then turned and pushed a flat slab of stone aside, revealing the dark mouth of a tunnel burrowed straight down into the floor.

“What’s this?” the commodore asked, peering down into the rank darkness.

“Home,” Captain Hawser answered. “Giants can’t find us here, so this is home. But only for a little while, now that you’re here.”