Jeff Crook: Conundrum

The MNS Indestructible is nearly out of air and the lower deck is completely flooded, including engineering. Amazingly, the spring engines have continued to run, outperforming by several hours the length of time needed between windings. I have welded the controls into place to hold the ship on course, should I faint from want of air. My initial concerns about the bilge were unfounded. I effected repairs, and it is now working, slowly emptying the ship of its weight of water, and she is rising up toward the surface. Last night, we came out from under the continent and are now coursing through open sea, though deep beneath its surface. I think it is New Sea, but I cannot be sure without taking navigational readings.

The ship will live up to her namesake, I think, though I fear none of us will survive. Conundrum- hangs on somehow. His burns seem to be healing with the help of some ointments I found in Doctor Bothy’s spare kit - lucky for us that the Medical Sciences Guild has long known the best cures for burns.

Air grows thinner by the minute. We shall not reach the surface in time. This log shall be our testament to the endurance of the will of gnomes, if it and this ship are ever found. I pray to Reorx who is no more that it does. We should not die in vain.

Conundrum turned the last page and found it blank. He closed the log, sighed, and lifted his eyes slowly from its worn cover. Before him stood a woman wearing long white robes with the symbol of the sun emblazoned on the breast. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a simple ring of silver, revealing a sad, smiling face, soft and radiant.

“It is good to see you awake at last, Conundrum,” she said, “but you should not tire yourself overmuch. You arrived here only seven days ago, and you were at the door of death.”

“Here? Where is here?” Conundrum asked.

“This is the Citadel of Light,” she answered softly.

“I’ve heard of this place,” he said excitedly. “This is where the healers are. You must have healed me!”

“Not I,” she corrected. “One more powerful than I. We have healed your body, but not your spirit. That is why we left your book here with you, so that you might find it and read it. There is much grief in your tale, and much joy. You needed to know its ending.”

“But I still don’t know its ending,” Conundrum said. “How did I come here, and what happened to Commodore Brigg?”

“We found your ship beached on the eastern shore of this island, where few ever venture,” the woman said. “You were the ship’s only survivor, and only just. Your commodore, I am sorry to say, was beyond our ability to heal.”

Conundrum hung his head in dejection. There were no more tears in his eyes, but his body shook with dry sobs.

“Does it help you to know these things?” the woman asked. “Some feared to reveal everything to you so early after your healing. I thought it best that you should know. I was born on Sancrist, you see, and have known gnomes before. I knew you would not rest until you knew all.”

“Thank you,” Conundrum said, clasping her hand.

She took it and gently helped him back into bed. She then set the ship’s log on the table beside the bed. “You should rest now. Soon it will be dark. In the morning, you may meet your healer. She will be pleased to hear of your recovery, and perhaps she will show you the place where we buried your commodore. Dwarves built his cairn.”

“I’d like that. Thank you again,” Conundrum said as he sank back on his pillows. “I don’t know how to thank you enough. I only wish…” but he did not finish the thought. Instead, he smiled.

The woman bowed and swept silently from the ward, softly closing the door behind her and leaving the room in silence. Outside, the last of the rain spattered on the windowsill, then the clouds lifted and allowed the setting sun to shine beneath, casting the chamber in a deep crimson glow.

Conundrum lay awake, watching darkness come. It was the darkness of his soul. Commodore Brigg had fulfilled his Life Quest to find his brother, as well as Snork’s to sub-navigate the continent. The professor had discovered what makes the continents float. Doctor Bothy found the cure for hiccoughs. Chief Portlost witnessed what had to be one of the greatest mishaps ever-several of them, in fact. And Sir Grumdish had slain his dragon.

He alone had not completed his Life Quest. In fact, he still hadn’t even found his Life Quest.

Rising from his bed, Conundrum slipped from the dark chamber. The door let out into a long, echoing hall paved with glistening black stone. It stretched away into darkness in both directions. Picking one direction, he followed it, hardly even noticing where he was going. He had a vague desire to see the Indestructible, but he had no idea where it lay, whether they had towed it to their own docks or left it rusting on the eastern shore of the island.

He found his way to a stair and descended it, crossed a wide hall, and passed through a towering doorway that stood open, even at this late hour. Knights of Solamnia stood guard at either side of it, but they did not speak to him as he passed, and he barely noticed them except to remember Sir Grumdish with a sad sigh.

He wandered out onto the grounds of the Citadel of Light. His eyes were bent downward, watching his thin slippers shuffling through the neatly clipped, rain-soaked winter grass. He felt a chill and remembered that he had on only a hospital gown, but he merely tucked his hands into his armpits and continued onward, his head bent, consumed in brooding thought.

After a time, he came to an abrupt stop, his nose in a clipped hedge. He stepped back and examined it, then looked around. He found himself between two hedges, one of them running off to his left for a few yards before turning left again, the other stretched back the way he had come, passing beneath an arch and opening onto the lawn where he’d been wandering aimlessly. A pair of tall crystalline domes rose beyond the lawn, glimmering in the light of the newly risen moon.

Shrugging, Conundrum turned left. He followed the corridor to its next turning, then to a crossing of four ways. Still brooding on his own problems, he chose a passage at random and continued walking.

And continued walking. He began to shiver with a chill and wondered how long he’d been wandering between hedges. He glanced quickly around, found the moon and got his bearings, then set out to return to his hospital ward. He was sure he could find it. If only he could get out of this hedge maze.

The next morning, Conundrum’s healer hurried on her way to the Citadel, for she’d heard her patient had recovered. As she crossed the lawn, she noticed a crowd of students gathered at the entrance to the hedge maze. They were laughing at something, and even as she looked, more hurried across the lawn to join in the fun. Shrugging, she diverted her course to see what all the commotion was about.

Seeing her approach, the crowd parted, many hiding snickers and chuckles behind their hands. What she saw filled her first with horror, but this quickly changed to relief and joy. Her patient was healed, body and soul.

Conundrum, still wearing his hospital gown, squatted at the entrance to the hedge maze, busily sketching it on a bed sheet with a chunk of charcoal.

“I got lost!” he said as he scratched a thick black line onto the linen. “Lost, if you know what I mean. Took me all night to find my way out, and even then only by accident!”

“Well, of course,” one of the students said. “This is the magical Hedge Maze of the Citadel of Light.”

“Yes, I know! Isn’t it wonderful?” Conundrum beamed, his bald head glistening in the light of the morning sun.