Mark Del Franco - Unquiet Dreams

“I’m either hallucinating or in some bizarre version of hell,” I said.

Moke smiled, his yellow teeth somehow not as offensive when he was cleaned up. “Naw, it’s just our cave.”

“If this is a cave, it’s the nicest one you’ve ever had, Moke,” Banjo said without looking up.

A deep laugh chortled up from Moke. “Heh, he gets to complaining about anything. He hates to stay under the bridge. Too cold, too cold, he says.”

He stood over me, the smile still on his lips. Sitting naked except for the sheet, my head pounding like a drum set, I felt a little vulnerable. I stared up at him and sipped more water. He reached his massive hands out and cupped my head completely. I didn’t move. I felt a short pulse of essence, an odd shifting in my head, followed by a loud pop. A trickle of sand poured out of my ears, and the sounds in the room became clearer.

Moke brushed his hands together and sat down. “How ya feel?”

“Like I fell four stories on my head.”

He nodded. “You’re fine. I worked the stone. Banjo, he gave the timing of it, he did. A good job that.” The dwarf looked at me over the tops of his glass, smiled, and went back to reading.

“I thought C-Note was melting the stone to kill me,” I said.

“Nah. He wanted the wood maid. Don’t know why. Skinny little thing, not much meat.” He gestured to the foul-smelling glass. “Drink that now. Ya need to drink.”

I picked it up. “What is it?”

Moke rumbled a laugh. “A little this, a little that. Clean the good earth from yer gut.”

“And how did the earth get into me?”

“Like I says, I worked the stone. Made ya a nice slurry to slow ya down, keep ya from crackin’ yer head. Then I wrapped ya in earth and pulled ya down below. Spelled earth gets in all nooks and crannies. Ya gonna die if ya don’t drink that.”

“Maybe I should go to Avalon Memorial.”

Moke shrugged and laughed again. “Ya could. They never get the sulfur right. Burn ya gut, they will. Burn for years.”

I looked at the yellow-tinged liquid. If Moke were going to kill me, he would have by now. I took a deep breath and downed it. It felt hot going down, but not burning. I drank more water.

“Why did you save me?”

Moke grinned wider. “Banjo sees many times, many days to come. The ones ya die, not so good for me.”

I looked over at the dwarf. Now I understood the sharp pains I had at Carnage. “He was scrying.”

Moke smiled. “Banjo best far-seer scryer ya ever meet, I says. He picked time. I grabbed ya.”

My chest tightened. He said building collapse. “How many died?”

Moke shrugged, a great shifting of the hunch on his back. “No one died that I know. Lots hurt, though. Yer gun cop friend screamed his head off that the building was on fire. Banjo started a fight, too, and everyone run like crazy. Stupid TruKnights. It was kinda funny to watch, though.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. You take your chances in the Tangle, but the building would still be standing if I hadn’t gone in. I looked at Banjo. “Thank you. Sorry I thought you were a traitor.”

He didn’t look up. “Cops aren’t the only ones who work undercover, you know.”

I pulled the sheet up around me and slid back against the wall surveying the room. Moke watched me. He cocked his head at the TV. “Pretty, no? The night is beauty, but light is, too. I like TV. Better life here.”

I smiled. I bet he liked game shows. “You were right, Moke. C-Note’s trouble.”

Moke nodded. “C-Note thinks yer dead now. He’s not very good troll. Didn’t even know I was there.”

“I need to get out of here,” I said.

Moke stood. “Give it an hour. The bathroom’s right out that door. Ya can take a bath if you wanna. Banjo don’t like smells, so’s he keeps sweet stuff in there.” He turned to Banjo. “I’m gonna go up and sleep, ’kay?”

“Do not bring any cats back.” Banjo looked at him sternly.

Moke laughed again. “I said ya could cook them next time.”

He went to the door. “Moke?” He turned. “I’m sorry about Croda.”

A wistful expression came over his face, his long, twisted nose almost quivering. “I knowed Croda a long time. She was a fine-looking woman, that one. Ya know, us trolls and ogres and giants are all the same. People of the Berg. We’s not like those crazy elveses and flittery kinds. The bones of the earth are all one. Croda was a strong woman.” He sighed and pounded his chest with a nod. “I still feel her strength. Her heart’s gone, but she died brave.” He strode away.

“Wipe your feet when you come back,” Banjo yelled. He settled back against the recliner and focused on his newspaper again, a pen poised in his hand. “What’s a seven-letter word for ‘mask’?”

The potion took that moment to demonstrate its effect. I ran for the bathroom. After a half hour, I could see why Moke recommended waiting. I finally showered, the water sluicing trails of grime off me and onto the glass tile floor. Reaching up to turn the shower faucet off made me smile at the strangeness of standing in an oversize shower room. When I dressed, I went back into the living room to find Banjo asleep in front of the TV.

I shook him. “Sorry, got to go.”

He frowned and shifted himself out of the recliner. He led me past the bathroom where a long hall ran on for several dozen feet with a series of closed doors. I could smell Moke more strongly. Banjo didn’t go any farther than the second door, which led to a stark utility tunnel.

“So, what likely potential future did you see me in?” I asked to the back and top of his head.

He didn’t turn. “I get paid good money for answers like that.”

“But it’s good, right?”

He didn’t answer right away. We turned a corner and began ascending a flight of stone stairs. Every so often another hallway would branch off, or the stairs would split in different directions. “I wasn’t looking for your future. Moke asked me to do a little looky at C-Note. All I know is, with you dead, business didn’t look good for us. With you not dead, it looked fifty-fifty.”

Moke dealt drugs. He made money on other people’s needs, sure, but that didn’t always mean the same thing as trading on addictions. Whatever his dietary habits or his line of work, I wasn’t going to complain that keeping me alive kept him in business. I was willing to cut him some slack. This time, at least.

The great oxymoron of scrying is its unpredictability. Dwarves were good at it, though druids would debate that. Seeing into the future had complications and ramifications. You never see exactly what will happen, but what could happen, based on certain circumstances. The most you could do with a particular vision was to make a choice to try to set it in motion. But the moment you made that choice, new permutations arose that did not necessarily lead where you’d hoped. For that reason, it was nearly impossible for the scryer to see his or her own future. “What did you see?”

He shrugged over his shoulder. “It wasn’t about you. I only figured out you were the wild card at Carnage by what was going on around you. There was something odd about you in the visions. They slipped around you like they didn’t know you were there. Never saw anything like that.”

That gave me a cold feeling. Several months earlier, Briallen had done a scry and failed to see anything. A disaster almost occurred. Whatever was dancing around in my head liked to keep its secrets when it came to me and the future.

Banjo stopped on a wide landing and pointed up another long flight of stairs, dimly lit. “This is as far as I’m going. I have to start dinner; otherwise, he’s going to eat something that’s bad for him. Up there, through the door, and you’re out. It closes behind you. Make sure you’re on the other side when it does, ’cause I’m only priming it for one opening, and if I have to come let you out again, I ain’t gonna be happy.”