Jeff Crook - Conundrum

“What do you want here, human?” she asked, half in admiration of his bravado.

“I have slain the thief come to rob you of your treasures,” Sir Tanar answered. He was thankful that his voice did not tremble, for in the face of this dragon, he dared not show fear.

“Thief?” Razmous said weakly. He blinked up at the Thorn Knight. “Oh, good zhob. Now where wuz I?” His eyes closed again, and his face grew paler as the pool of blood grew wider around his outstretched body.

The Thorn Knight continued, “We serve the same mistress, you and I."

“Takhisis is gone!” the dragon roared. “I serve no one but myself.”

“Be that as it may, I have been in contact with my Mistress, and it was she who suggested I make an alliance with you,” Sir Tanar ventured. “She knows you of old. She was, in fact, surprised that you are still alive. She has not heard your name spoken for many a year, not since the Dragon Purge began.”

Charynsanth’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. She had fled here at the beginning of the Purge, after her mate was slain by the green dragon Beryl.

“We can help each other, you and I,” Tanar continued, feeling more confident. “I’ve killed this thief, and I know of your war with the giants. I can tell you of a way to get into the giant’s city, O mighty Charynsanth.”

“You were with those miserable little interlopers before,” she hissed. “I saw you go onboard their little ship after I roasted those two. They were small, barely more than a mouthful after I finished cooking them.”

“There are enough left over to satisfy even your appetite,” Sir Tanar said.

She purred, chuckling, the fires in her belly spouting from her nostrils. “And I after I kill them, what do you get?” Charynsanth asked.

“Their ship,” he answered. “Nothing more. Just their ship, and a few members of the crew to operate it. The city, the giants, and their treasure I leave to you.”

He did not mention that he needed the ship and her crew to find the entrance to the Abyss, nor that he planned to escape in the ship while Charynsanth was busy with the giants. Still, something in her eyes told him that she suspected as much.

“How very wise of you,” the dragon said, but her tone was sarcastic, as if she divined his motives.

“I’ll come tomorrow to tell you the way,” Sir Tanar said, his voice shaking, “and I’ll bring a morsel to whet your appetite.” With these words, he turned and strode away, swallowing the ball of steel wool that had formed in his throat.

Charynsanth pulled herself up the slope to watch him go, her massive ivory claws digging into the stone. She paused over the outstretched form of the kender, sniffing at him hungrily. He was barely enough even to take the trouble to swallow, but at least he was warm and juicy, not burned to a crisp.

As she hovered over him, Razmous’s eyes opened a slit. “Oh, hello,” he whispered. “My name izh Razhmouf Pingepogget. Are you going to defour me?”

“I thought I might,” the dragon answered with begrudging admiration, almost pity for this miserable wretch who had been treacherously stabbed in the back by what was probably his companion, if not his friend. That wizard would be one to watch, she thought. He might try the same with me.

“Oh, good,” Razmous sighed sleepily. “Do hurry, “fore I fall azleeb. I doan wanna mizh thizh.”

Conundrum’s ascending kettle had been fully converted into what they had decided to call a diving bell. Inside the large copper kettle, they had built a shelf to sit on and a rack to hold bottles of compressed air, and they had placed a small porthole on one side to allow the occupant to see his surroundings. The whole thing was wrapped in a large cargo net and doubly secured at the top to make sure the bell wouldn’t tip over and let out all the air. It dangled by a rope that ran through a pulley, which was suspended by a boom attached to the stern of the Indestructible. From the pulley, the rope led down through a hatch into the engine room of the ship, where it wound round a wheel attached to the main drive spring-which, for this experiment, was connected both to the flowpellars and the wench, with power transferable between the two devices by way of an ingenious box of gears called a “dyno.” (Short for “how do I know?” As in, “What does that thing do?” “How do I know?”) Of course, the Indestructible had miles and miles of rope, because gnomes never went anywhere without miles and miles of rope, not if they could help it. One simply never knew when one might need to build, say, a suspension bridge, or for that matter, lower a diving bell to the other side of Krynn.

Maritime Sciences Guild motto: Be overly prepared.

The ship’s remaining red-jumpsuited ensigns were placed in charge of operating the wench, while Conundrum and the commodore stood by the boom. Conundrum found himself once more in charge of oilage, this time of the pulley. Doctor Bothy stood by with his medical trunk, hiccoughing softly. Captain Hawser and Chief Portlost were ready inside the crab in case of emergencies-like a sudden attack by giants. Normally, Sir Grumdish would have handled the security details, but he was strangely absent, as were Razmous and Sir Tanar. Commodore Brigg not-so-secretly hoped that Sir Tanar had gotten lost in the city. In his opinion, the wizard was up to no good in his secretive exploration of the ruins. “Maybe,” the commodore whispered in a prayer to Reorx, “he’s been eaten by giants.” He also crossed his fingers behind his back and tied a lucky knot in his beard, just for good measure.

For this experiment, they needed every bit of luck they could get, for this exploratory dive into the seemingly bottomless chasm at the bottom of the flooded cavern was fraught with danger. A million things could go wrong, and even the gnomes were willing to admit that, with them, things that could go wrong usually did. The rope could break, the diving bell could settle on a ledge and tip over, it could catch on a stony projection and be hung there forever, the wench could jam or break, or the water at the depths to which he was diving might be steaming hot and cook him like a lobster in a pot.

Yet Professor Hap believed that the scientific benefits of the dive would far outweigh its risks. It was possible, as Razmous had suggested, that the chasm led down to the Abyss, or as Captain Hawser suspected, to the other side of Krynn. But the professor had his own theory, one that he most hoped to prove and, in doing so, complete his Life Quest. He believed that the chasm led to the underside of the continent of Ansalon.

When everything was ready, Professor Hap-Troggensbottle emerged from below. In one hand, he carried a blue glowwormglobe suspended, like the diving bell itself, in a net sling so that he could hang it from a hook inside the bell. He wore the last of his skin-tight black diving suits, including bladderpack, fishbowl, and duckfeet, just in case he ran out of air or the diving bell filled up with water. In his heavy shoes, he thumped slowly across the aft deck.

Commodore Brigg ordered the bell lowered to the deck. The professor paused to allow Conundrum to tighten the neck seal around his fishbowl and secure the hose to the bladder pack. He then gave the commodore a folded scrap of paper and said, his voice muted by the glass, “This is a code that I have prepared so that we will be able to communicate a little more elaborately than the old one-pull-two-pull system usually employed in umbilical diving of this sort. The diving bell, as you can see, acts as a sort of resonating chamber.” He demonstrated by rapping it with his knuckle, producing a single metallic note. At the same time, the note was echoed by a small ringer attached to the pulley from which the diving bell depended.