Dragons of a Lost Star

7 The River of the Dead

It is a sad truism that the misfortunes of others, no matter how terrible, always pale in comparison to our own. At this moment in his life, if someone had told Conundrum that armies of goblins and hobgoblins, draconians, hired thugs, and murderers were marching on the elves, the gnome would have laughed in derision and rolled his eyes.

“They think they have trouble?” he would have said. “Hah! They should be down beneath the ocean in a leaky submersible with a crazed human woman who keeps insisting that I follow a bunch of dead people. Now that is trouble.”

If Conundrum had been told that his friend the kender, who had provided him with the means to finally be able to achieve his life quest and map the Hedge Maze, was being held prisoner by the most powerful mage in all the world in the Tower of High Sorcery, Conundrum would have sneered.

“The kender thinks he has trouble! Hah! He should try to operate the submersible all by himself when it requires a crew of twenty. There is trouble for you!”

In fact, the submersible worked far better with a crew of one, since the other nineteen simply added to the weight and got in the way and used up the air. The original voyage that left Mt. Nevermind and headed to the citadel had started with a crew of twenty, but the others had become lost, mislaid, or seriously burned along the way, leaving at last only Conundrum, who had been but a lowly passenger, in sole control. He knew nothing whatsoever about the complicated system of mechanics designed to power the MNS Indestructible, undoubtedly the reason the vessel had remained afloat as long as it had.

The vessel was designed in the shape of a large fish. It was made of wood, which made it light enough to float, and then covered with iron, which made it heavy enough to sink. Conundrum knew that there was a crank he had to crank in order to keep the vessel moving forward, another crank that made the vessel move up, and a third that made the vessel go down. He was somewhat vague on what the cranks actually did, although he recalled a gnome (perhaps the late captain) telling him that the rear crank caused the fins at the rear of the vessel to whirl about in a frenzied manner, stirring up the water and thus propelling the vessel forward. The crank at the bottom caused fins at the bottom to whirl, sending the vessel upward, while fins on the top reversed that process.

Conundrum knew that along with the cranking there were a good many gears that had to be constantly oiled. He knew this because all gnomes everywhere know that gears must be constantly oiled. He had been told that there were bellows that pumped air into the submersible, but he was unable to figure out how these worked and so concluded that it would be wisest, if less scientific, to bring the Indestructible up to the surface for air every few hours. Since the bellows did not work and had never worked, this proved to be sound reasoning on his part.

At the start of his enforced journey, Conundrum asked Goldmoon why she had stolen his submersible, where she planned to go with it, and what she intended to do once they got there. It was then she made the startling pronouncement that she was following the dead, that the dead guided her and protected her, and the dead were leading her across New Sea to where she must go. When he asked, quite logically, why the dead had seen fit to tell her to steal his boat, she had said that diving underwater was the only means by which they could escape the dragon.

Conundrum tried to interest Goldmoon in the workings of the submersible and to elicit her help in the cranking—which was wearing on the arms—or at least the help of the dead, since they appeared to be the ones in charge of this trip. She paid no attention to him. Conundrum found his passenger exasperating, and he would have turned the Indestructible around on the spot and sailed back to his Hedge Maze, dragon or no dragon, but for the lamentable fact that he did not have the faintest idea how to make the boat go in any direction other than up, down, and forward.

Nor, as it turned out, did the gnome know how to make the boat stop, thus giving a new and unfortunate meaning to the term “landfall.”

Due to either fate or the guidance of the dead, the Indestructible did not smash headlong into a cliff or run aground on a reef. Instead it plowed into a sandy beach, its fins still flapping, sending up great spumes of sand and seawater, mangling jellyfish, and terrorizing the sea birds. The final mad plunge up onto the beach was jouncing and uncomfortable but not fatal to the passengers. Goldmoon and Conundrum escaped with only minor cuts and bruises. The same could not be said of the Indestructible.

Goldmoon stood on the deserted beach and breathed the fresh sea air deeply. She paid no attention to the cuts on her arms or the bruise on her forehead. This strange new body of hers had the capacity to heal itself. Within moments, the blood would dry, the flesh close together, the bruises fade away. She would continue to feel the pain of the injuries, but only on her true body, the body that was the weak and frail body of an elderly human.

She did not like this new body that had been miraculously bestowed on her—an unwilling recipient—the night of the terrible storm, but she had come to realize that its strength and health were essential in order to take her to wherever it was the dead wanted her to go. The old body would not have made it this far. It was near death. The spirit that resided in the old body neared death as well. Perhaps that was the reason Goldmoon could see the dead when others could not. She was closer now to the dead than to the living.

The pale river of spirits flowed over the windswept dunes, heading north. The long greenish-brown grass that grew on the dunes rippled with the wind of their passing. Gathering up the hem of her long white robes, the robes that marked her a Mystic of the Citadel of Light, Goldmoon made ready to follow.

“Wait!” cried Conundrum, who had been staring open-mouthed at the destruction of the Indestructible. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

Goldmoon did not reply but continued on. Walking was difficult. She sank into the soft sand with every step. Her robes hampered her movements.

“You can’t leave me,” Conundrum stated. He waved an oil-covered hand. “I’ve lost an immense amount of time ferrying you across the sea, and now you have broken my boat. How am I going to return to my life quest—mapping the Hedge Maze?”

Goldmoon halted and turned to look back at the gnome. He was not a savory sight, with his scraggly hair and untidy beard, his face flushed with righteous indignation and smeared with oil and blood.

“I thank you for bringing me,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above the freshening wind and the crashing waves. “I am sorry for your loss, but I can do nothing to help you.” She shifted her head, gazed northward. “I have a journey I must make. I cannot linger here or anywhere.” Looking back at the gnome, she added, kindly, “I would not leave you stranded. You may come with me, if you choose.”

Conundrum looked at her, then back at the Indestructible, which had certainly not lived up to its name. Even he, a passenger, could see that repairs were going to be long and costly, to say nothing of the fact that since he’d never understood how the contraption worked in the first place, making it work again would present certain problems.

“Besides,” he said to himself, more brightly, “I’m certain the owner has it insured, and he will no doubt be compensated for the loss.”

This was taking an optimistic view of the matter. One might say an optimistic and completely unrealistic view, since it was a well known fact that the Guild of Insurers​Equity​Under​and​Over​writers​Collision​​Accidental​Dismemberment​Fire​Flood​Not​Liable​for​Acts​of​God had never paid out a single copper piece, although there were, following the Chaos War, innumerable lawsuits pending, contending that ActsofGod no longer counted, since there were no longer any gods. Due to the fact that the lawsuits had to go through the gnomish legal system, it was not expected that they would be settled during the litigants’

lifetimes but would be handed down to the generations coming afterward, all of whom would be financially ruined by the accruing legal fees. Conundrum had few belongings to retrieve from the wreckage. He had run off from the citadel so fast that he had left behind his most important belonging—the map of the Hedge Maze. The gnome was confident that the map would be found and, considering that it was a Marvel to end all Marvels, would naturally be placed in a most safe and secure part of the Citadel of Light.

The only thing salvaged from the wreckage was a knife that had belonged to the late captain. The knife was remarkable, for it had all sorts of tools attached to it and could do just about everything. It could open a bottle of wine, tell you which direction was north, and crack the shells of recalcitrant oysters. Its one drawback was that you couldn’t cut anything with it, since it lacked a blade, the inventor having run out of room, but that was a minor inconvenience compared to the fact that you could use it to trim your nose hairs.

Thrusting the remarkable knife in the pocket of his ink-stained and oily robes, Conundrum floundered, sliding and stumbling along the beach. He paused once to turn and look back at the Indestructible. The submersible had the forlorn appearance of a beached whale and was already being covered over by drifting sand.

Conundrum set out after Goldmoon, who was following the river of the dead.