From the time they’d entered the tavern less than an hour had elapsed, and in that brief span a little truth had reduced a placid establishment and its contented patrons to bloody chaos.
The path to the front door was blocked by battling customers. That was where the police would tenter anyway. Dragging the Veritable by its cord, he worked his way around behind the bar and found himself in the company of its owner, a corpulent pangolin. Semiprecious stones and sequins sparkled among his scales.
“My beautiful gaming room!” he wailed.
“You have to help me get out of here.” Buncan hugged the Veritable close.
“No, you don’t,” the grid informed the tavern owner cheerily. “It’s not necessary.”
“Shut up.” Though he doubted it would do any good, Buncan slammed a fist down on top of the device. It made him feel better.
“What’s that?” The pangolin was eyeing the Veritable with sudden interest.
“Nothing,” Buncan growled. “A toy.”
The pangolin looked uncertain. “I can’t imagine what started this.”
“He did,” declared the Veritable. “He and his friends. Three otters.”
The proprietor’s voice rose. “So! You are the offspring of that tree-dwelling spellsinger, are you not? Wonderful! I can sue for damages. The wizard’s guild shall hear of this!”
“Watch yourself,” said Buncan warningly. “You can’t sue a spellsinger.”
“Of course you can,” chirped the box.
This time Buncan gave it a swift, hard kick. It rolled over and came to rest right side up. The radiance within was as strong and implacable as ever.
“You can’t get rid of the truth that easily, my young human friend.”
“How about if I dump you in the deepest part of the river?”
“Won’t work. The truth has a tendency to cling.”
“Truth, eh?” The pangolin looked delighted. “Then I can sue a spellsinger for damages?”
“Yes. But you wouldn’t want to.”
The narrow-faced insectivore entrepreneur blinked. “Why not?”
“Because you’ve been running a crooked house here all along.”
“I, crooked? What are you saying?”
“All these ‘decorative’ mirrors. In the walls, in the ceiling.” The plug stiffened, the prongs pointing upward. “Some are made of one-way glass. You have agents in the crawl spaces above them, spying on the games below. They report to your own plants among the players, who adjust their games accordingly. A large portion of their illegal winnings goes to the house. To you. They skim just enough off the legitimate games so that none of your patrons become suspicious.”
“Rend-in-a-box! Accursed furniture of the Nether Regions!” The enraged owner searched wildly for a weapon.
“Easy to curse the truth!” shouted the Veritable as Buncan hefted it in his arms and rushed toward the back of the tavern in hopes of finding an exit. “Hard to deal with it!”
A large bottle of amber liquid exploded against the wall to his left as he dumped the Veritable into a garbage chute and dove through behind it. It deposited both of them atop a fetid mound of quite indescribable foulness in the alley behind the establishment. Struggling to his feet, he stumbled free of the rancid hillock and gathered the Veritable in his arms.
“Which is the safest way to go?” He glanced wildly to left and right, scanning both ends of the alley.
“To your left.” The Veritable spoke without hesitation.
As he staggered off in the indicated direction, Buncan rounded a corner and found himself face-to-face with Ragregren, the wolf who’d been at Mudge’s table and who was largely responsible for initiating the melee inside. Blood trickled from a gash on his forehead and one ear dangled loose, having been bitten almost completely through. His rustic attire was in disarray, stained with liquor and blood only partially his own. One paw gripped the amputated leg of a chair, and he was breathing hard.
“You!” he rumbled darkly. “You and that, that unmentionable thing are the cause of this!” With a cry, he charged, holding the chair leg over his furry head.
Buncan ducked, and the makeshift club smashed into the wall behind him. “I thought you said this was the best way to go! You lied!”
“I never lie,” said the Veritable primly. “My hearing is most excellent. I overheard the owner giving directions to his minions. They lie in wait at the other end of mis passageway, and would most certainly have killed you had you gone that way. This one is merely likely to just beat you up.”
“You can count on it!” Ragregren raised the club over bis head and brought it down sharply. Unable to reach his sword, Buncan attempted to block the blow with the only shield at hand.
The club struck the Veritable. Buncan braced himself for the impact, but surprisingly mere was none. No shock, no recoil. The chair leg fragmented into splinters, the splinters disintegrated and became sawdust, the sawdust sifted to the ground as evanescent yellow glitter.
“Violence will never break the truth,” the Veritable declared positively. “Submerge it sometimes, blanket it sometimes, but destroy it, never.”
Buncan pursed his lips. “Neat trick.”
“Damn your eyes!” the wolf howled. “Damn you and your accursed device!” He whirled and ran down the alley in search of another weapon.
Buncan waited until Ragregren was out of sight. The distant echo of battle still resounded inside the tavern. “Is it safe to go on now?”
“Yes.”
“No, I mean really safe?”
“Really safe. Insofar as I am able to judge the truth of the situation.”
An inquisitive crowd had gathered outside the tavern. They evaporated wordlessly when a wagon full of uniformed skunks, civet cats, and zorillas arrived. The police would quickly put an end to the conflict, Buncan knew.
Among the hastily retreating spectators, one face stood out. He ran toward her, waving feebly.
“Mariana! It’s me, over here!”
She didn’t slow until they met behind a general store. One didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity when the police began their work. Her expression fully conveyed her reaction to his appearance.
“Buncan? What happened to you?” She nodded in the direction of the tavern. “What’s going on in there?”
“I don’t know.”
“A lie,” said the Veritable.
Ignoring the observation, she peered curiously at the machine. “What’s that?”
“Never mind. Have you any transportation?”
“My riding lizard, but . . .”
“Can I borrow it? Just for a short while.” He glanced nervously back toward the tavern, where shrieks and screams indicated that Lynchbany’s finest had set to work among the miscreants inside. “I have to get out of town fast.” He held up the Veritable. “This is something the great Clothahump and my father need to deal with.”
She wrinkled her nose and took a step back from him. “My lizard’s not with me. I walked into town.”
“That’s a falsehood. It’s close by.”
Her pretty face twisted as she glared at the box. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Of course. It’s my job.”
She spoke as she continued to back away. “What is this, Buncan? Some kind of depraved necromancy propounded by your father and that ridiculous turtle he works with?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” he implored her. “It’s something I found, Squill and Neena and I.”
“Those otters. No wonder.” She hesitated. “Maybe you’re not responsible, then. I guess . . . I guess I could do something.”
“You’ve got to help me, Mariana. You know how deeply I feel about you.”
“Lie,” burped the box.
“It’s not! Mariana’s a good friend.”
“Another lie.” Buncan gazed at his loquacious burden in horror. “You just want to get into her pants. You’ve been dreaming of it for years.” With great difficulty the mecha
nism managed to inject something like an electronic leer into its artificial voice.
Mariana gaped at the Veritable, then up at Buncan. “You bastard! I thought you loved me. And here I’ve been saving myself for you.”
“Lies, lies, lies,” the box chorused happily. “You’ve already slept with more of this young human’s friends than he could imagine.”
Buncan swallowed hard. “Mariana, can this be true?”
“Of course it can be true,” declared the Veritable. “I just said it was, didn’t I?”
“Damn you!” Buncan raised the machine over his head, intending to smash it to the pavement. But when he looked to Mariana for approval she was already gone, lost in the crowded streets. Slowly he brought the box back down.
Then he started running, grim-faced, through the throng and toward the edge of town. As he ran, the Grand Veritable provided a running commentary, as it were.
“That one there, the large man, has a vial of poison in his pocket that he intends for his mate’s lover. And that one next to him is—”
“Be silent!” Without much hope but not knowing what else to do, Buncan slapped a hand over the grid.
“Sorry,” the muffled voice of the Veritable replied, “but I’m starting to feel really good. Warmed up. There are so many suppressed truths about that need telling.”
“I don’t want to hear them!”
“Yes, you do.”
“Please,” Buncan mumbled as he flew along, “have some pity.”
The Veritable’s voice was like the wind off a glacier. “There is no pity in truth. Like most people, you fear it.”
“And with good reason,” panted Buncan as he raced toward the forest.
CHAPTER 27
Somehow he made it to the familiar, tranquil glade. Jon-Tom and Clothahump weren’t present, but a perplexed Mulwit let him in and made him comfortable while they waited.
“I tried to warn you,” said Clothahump when he and Jon-Tom finally returned, “but you would not listen to me.” He took a deep breath, expanding his carapace. “Hardly anyone under a hundred ever listens to me.”
“Mttdge never listened to anyone, me included.” Jon-Tom peered anxiously into his exhausted son’s sweat-streaked, grime-laden face. Behind them the Grand Veritable once again reposed quietly on the workshop bench, a picture of mechanical innocence.
Buncan wiped dirt from his eyes. “I never realized how dangerous the truth could be.”
“Civilization is not founded on absolute truths,” Clothahump declaimed importantly, “but only on those the majority of people can deal with, and those are precious few.”
“Truth,” the Veritable observed.
“Nobody asked you,” Jon-Tom growled. Buncan kept a watchful eye on the device, as though at any moment the twin metal prongs on the plug might metamorphose into actual, dripping fangs.
“What are we going to do with it?” Jon-Tom asked his mentor.
Clothahump considered the temporarily quiescent device. “Try to magic it away, I suppose. I will make an attempt. Should that fail, perhaps a spellsong would be in order.”
“Yeah!” Buncan sat up quickly. “I could . . .!” He went silent at the look on his father’s face.
Clothahump’s magic shook and twisted the tree, and drew curious storm clouds overhead. Lightning and thunder failed to impress the Veritable, which sat unmoving atop the workbench. When the turtle eventually admitted defeat, Jon-Tom drew upon his memory for his most powerful spellsongs. These likewise had no effect. Finally he even let his wayward son have a go at the duar while he sang in place of the absent otters, all to no avail.
“You can’t wish away the truth.” The Veritable spoke up only when it was clear they’d finally thrown in the thaumaturgical towel. “Not all your spells or sorcery can make it disappear. Nor is it so easy to dump in a river,” it added pointedly.
“We must get rid of it somehow.” The wizard looked sternly at Buncan, who was appropriately contrite. “I tried to warn you about bringing it back. Most people already have all the truth they can stand. More, in fact.”
“That’s so,” agreed the Veritable.
“It induces the ill-equipped, which is to say most folk, to fight among themselves. It destroys families, whole communities. It starts wars.”
“That’s not my fault,” said the device. “I don’t make truths. I only report on mem. You can’t blame me if people prefer comfortable prevarications. Why, if everyone told the truth I’d be out of a job, and damn glad of it.”
Jon-Tom looked beaten, but no more so than his mentor. “What do we do now?”
“Leave it here. Isolate it within mis tree. Keep it away from everyone else. I have lived several hundred years and can handle the truth better than most. We must all do our best to ignore it.”
“You can’t isolate the truth, and you can’t ignore it,” declared the Veritable.
Eyes glittering, Clothahump approached the mechanism. Beneath that wizened, unexpectedly energetic gaze the plug drew back. Maybe the truth couldn’t be eliminated, but it could occasionally be cowed.
“We can but try.” The wizard beckoned to Jon-Tom. “Come, my friend. We will consult the texts and see what can be done. If anything more can be done.”
That night a lithe, muscular shadow approached Clotha-hump’s tree. Numerous spells protected the wizard’s home, but this particular intruder had prepared well for his nocturnal excursion. Proceeding directly to the object of his intentions, he swathed it in a large canvas bag and tossed it over his shoulder. Mulwit, who ought to have detected the thief, unaccountably slept through the entire intrusion.
In a distant riverbank Mudge and Talea lay entwined in a manner no humans, no matter how flexible, could have duplicated. Having recovered from the fracas at the tavern, a spent Squill and Neena gently whistled away the night in their own beds. Side by side in a tree somewhat less ensorceled than Clothahump’s, Jon-Tom and Talea alternately hugged covers and one another, while down the woody hallway Buncan tossed and turned uneasily in his sleep.
So the thief got away clean, to rejoin his colleagues in the depths of the Bellwoods.
“I told you I could do it!” Triumphantly, the coati unbagged his prize. In the dim light his companions eyed it appreciatively.
“Truly you are the greatest among thieves, O honored Chamung,” the raccoon murmured. His ringtailed companion concurred.
“I knew that if we waited, and watched, and bided our time, the opportunity for revenge would come!” The bandit leader’s teeth glinted in the light that fell between the Belltrees. “Those cursed interfering youths! I would have slit their throats, but the tree was empty save for the dotty old wizard and his apprentice. With them I have no quarrel.” He nudged the Grand Veritable with a foot.
“Now we have this: the booty they journeyed so far to acquire. I learned of it during a brawl at Nogel’s Tavern in Lynchbany, and subsequently laid my plan. They cost me my band; therefore I take their prize. Life is just!” His voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you know what this magical device does?”
“Uh-uh,” admitted the ringtail, wondering simultaneously if he was being set up.
“It reveals the truth. All truths, apparent or hidden. With mis I will raise a great army. Beginning with Lynchbany, we will lay waste to the Bellwoods. The forest will run red with blood. Not even a great wizard can stand against the truth! I will bathe in his scraped-out shell, and sleep on the tanned skins of those three cubs, and those of their relations, and their friends. In payment for the humiliation I have suffered, then’ skulls will be impaled on the gables of my home!” Exhilarated and breathing hard, he struggled to unwind.
“Come, my loyal companions. It is time to begin.” They moved into deeper forest, heading toward town. “I will share my victory with you, as I have always shared our spoils.”‘
“Speaking to that,” chirped the Grand Veritable unexpectedly, “it is a statement which contains several blatant untruths.”
/> “No one queried you, box,” snarled Chamung.
When he looked up, it was to find that his two remaining warriors were eyeing him speculatively.
* * *
Not too many days later a thrashed, defeated figure limped into the distant town of Malderpot, having been chased from one town after another. His domes were in rags, one ear and several teeth were missing, and his formerly resplendent tail had been singed down to the bare skin.
The hidden chime tinkled as the door to the small shop closed behind him, shutting out the steady rain. Beneath one arm he carried a scratched and battered, but still intact, metal box from which issued a steady, undying saffron glow.
As the visitor warily shoved back the hood of his cape the shop’s proprietor, a slightly inebriated muskrat, emerged from behind a curtain. Though he had been drinking steadily to keep out the cold, sufficient faculties remained to nun to reveal that the coati had been through a difficult time. The muskrat perked up. Here was an individual in the final stages of physical and mental dissolution. In short, the source of a possible bargain.
The walls of the little shop were covered with strange objects, its shelves lined with tightly capped jars full of noisome organics. Mysterious devices and stuffed reptiles hung from the ceiling, dangling at the ends of strong wires.
“Thimocane, you have to help me.” The coati’s voice was shaky, and his speech was interrupted frequently by hacking coughs. “I am told that you are a wizard.”
“I used to engage in shorcery,” the muskrat admitted freely. “Now I shimply buy and shell. I’m short of shemiretired, you shee. But if you’d like to buy me a case of good liquor . . .”
“Later, later.” The coati glanced nervously over a shoulder, as though even on a rotten night like this someone might be after him. Or some thing. “I can’t buy you anything right now, or even pay for your services. I’m utterly broke.”
The muskrat raised both paws. “Then I don’t know what you’re doing here. I’m no charity.”
“Please!” The coati all but collapsed on the narrow countertop. “You’ve got to help me! If you don’t I will surely die . . . or go mad.”