Conundrum

Chapter
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 have 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.

“Come on,” Razmous whispered to his companions. “We’ll be very stealthy.”

He was creeping away on his tiptoes before anyone could object. The others followed with a great degree of trepidation. Sir Grumdish shook and chattered his teeth like a frightened child, all desire for testing the UANP vanished from his mind-upon reflection, the weapon appeared woefully inadequate. They edged far too close to those enormous bloodshot eyes (one of which was always scanning its surroundings), flapping ears, and piggish nostrils-and especially its prognathous out-thrust jaw with its goblinoid tusks dripping with saliva that hissed when it struck the water.

But the monster had not heard, scented, or seen them. Perhaps their black frogsuits blended with the shadows of the forest or covered their scent sufficiently, or perhaps the monster was too busy with its own activities to notice them. It seemed most intent on something in the water. It stood still as a stone, only its massive chest swelling with each breath, as it eyed something in the water.

Suddenly, it dove after some fish or other creature, chasing it round and round the pool with much noisy thrashing and angry snarling. So huge was the monster that its violence sent huge waves crashing halfway up the bank to the explorers” hiding place. It smashed the water with its gigantic black-clawed hands, lunged this way and that, angrily snapped its jaws, and plunged beneath the surface, revealing a broad back studded with bony protrusions.

“What is that thing?” Conundrum whispered in awe.

“Probably a chaos beast,” Razmous answered. “All sorts of strange monsters were born from the Chaos War. Probably, he’s attracted to this area because of the shipwrecks. It’s a fact that shipwrecks often-”

At that moment, the beast surfaced, its three eyes smoldering and its claws empty. It glared around at the surrounding forest, its flat, piggish nostrils testing the air currents. The gnomes held their breath, the gully dwarf cowering behind them. But the fearless kender crept another step closer.

Though Razmous made no sound, the monster suddenly crouched, all three eyes swiveling around to probe the dense underbrush where the gnomes hid.

“Who is there?” it howled in a voice that was somewhere between the rumble of a crocodile and the bellow of a charging bull. The smaller trees shook at the volume of its voice. Out on the Indestructible, everyone suddenly looked up in wonder at the strange noise.

“Who is there?” the monster demanded again. It took a step back and crouched low in the water. “You might as well show yourselves. You can’t escape me. My three eyes are sharper than an eagle’s, my nose more sensitive than a hound’s. I can hear the heartbeat of a mouse at a hundred paces, or the water passing through a fish’s gills at ten. There is no place to hide in this barren wilderness, no stone under which you can cower that I can’t overturn. Come out and let me see you and tell me the nature of your ship and how many survived, for I have eaten many of your kind, farers of the salty sea, but-” Here it paused and tested the air with its flaring nostrils-“I cannot place your smell. What are you?”

“Nothing!” Razmous squeaked cleverly in his high kender voice. His words came out of the forest like an echo, scattered by the trunks of the trees so that it was difficult for the monster to determine its exact origin. However, his companions were beside themselves in fear and rage at his foolishness.

“Who is it who is nothing yet answers my questions?” the monster asked as it crouched a little lower in the water.

“Nobody,” Razmous squawked again, suppressing a giggle. Conundrum clawed at his arm, trying to pull him down and shut him up, but the kender merely turned on him with a grin spreading from pointed ear to pointed ear, and stepped out from their covering screen of trees.

“Don’t worry,” he chided over his shoulder. “I read this in a book somewhere.”