Una & Varrie Chapters 3-5 (Patreon)

I sooooo do not have ANY idea for a title for this book. -_-;;;

Una's adventures continue with the visit to Dormongara. I purposefully do not mention anything about what's up in HIS life because I will circle back to that once the Court of the Last Dragon is over.

Chapter Three

At week’s end, the Keeper of the Dead, Lord Gara, arrived in the district to receive requests from the Ven-Diri in Laionesse. Since the war ended, he had been traveling all across the continent in order to help locate the missing.

While Lord Gara was only the current Keeper of the Dead, every last one of them had been named Lord Gara, and every one of them was a dark and dourly handsome man—heavier on the dour than the handsome. Even when the title changed hands, there was a comforting level of consistency to it. The Keeper of the Dead was sort of like the moon; you didn’t always see him, but you knew he was there and he’d come back around sooner or later.

Since he was a fairly reclusive man and didn’t enjoy crowds, his arrival was an event. A quiet event, since no one wanted to scare him off for next time, but an event all the same. No one blamed him for being antisocial. He was also the world’s most powerful necromancer. “Only the Keeper can save him” was an expression when anyone had gotten themselves in too deep with anything, because there was a certain level of dead when only Lord Gara could bring you back. 

(Supposedly. Lord Gara never actually brought anyone back. It was more legend than practice.)

Una and Yurya waited in line to see him on a brisk afternoon, just one day before the autumn equinox. A few leaves were starting to change, and the air was dry and smelled vaguely of smoke and apples. Fall days and old books were Una’s two favorite smells. They were at the back of the queue, not wanting to appear too eager. Una had Vi’s money tucked in her little black velvet bag, and she kept lifting it and feeling the weight of the coins.

Everyone was wearing their best, all black with barely a spot of color, although the older men always had a little starched white ruffle at the throat and wrists and the old women wore their sleeves long and draping.

“When I’m old, I’m not going to just keep wearing the same thing,” Una whispered to Yurya.

“Of course not,” Yurya agreed. “But it’s easier to keep up with the fashions now. We have the Shades of Black Annual.”

Una nodded, assuring herself that she would always read this annual fashion guide and never go to see Lord Gara in a draping sleeve. She glanced around for any young men in the line and saw two of her old classmates, now married, but there was an obvious lack of unattached men anywhere near her age.

“The Miralem do have one thing right, sending women and men to fight,” Una sighed. “It would be all evened out.”

“But then we’d have to fight,” Yurya said, shuddering. “I really don’t mind if I never marry. If I ever did, I know what would happen. He’d want me to get rid of my dolls, or at least put them off in a closet.”

“But I don’t have fifty dolls!” Una whimpered.

“I think you need some sort of purpose,” Yurya said. “No one’s going to marry me anyway. I know I’m about as sexy as a snail. So I’ve always had to think about more interesting things. You need something to focus on and not just the lack of something.”

“I have a purpose,” Una said. “Selling books is the best job I could possibly have. And I am a cat mother.”

“You could hire a Fanarlem servant.”

“Yurya! I’m not going to hire a servant and expect that kind of thing! Gods!”

“Of course you wouldn’t expect it. I just hear it happens,” Yurya said.

“Shh!” The older woman behind them gave them a sharp look. “We’re in line to see Lord Gara.”

“Sorry, we know,” Yurya said.

“You don’t have to say sorry,” Una whispered in the barest voice she could manage. “What is it to her? Lord Gara can’t hear us back here.”

“I know. So fussy. But she has the sleeves.”

“Yes, she does have the sleeves.” They snickered. The older woman glared and glared. The line slowly moved, and eventually they were on the steps, right before the door. Lord Gara was receiving people in the parlor of the Dorga family, one of the old and powerful families, known for spirit calling. They usually practiced their spirit calling in the parlor, and their house was supposedly resting over powerful ground, so it was a natural spot for Lord Gara to use his magic as well.

“Have you ever been in their house?” Una asked Yurya.

“No, never,” Yurya said. “We never get invited to the ‘good’ houses.”

“No indeed.”

A little girl was making her way down the line with the overly serious face of a Child Entrusted to a Job. The first thing they noticed was that she also had the sleeves, draping sleeves with her knee-length skirt and a wine red pinafore with pockets shaped like cat heads.

“Uh-oh, they might come back into style anyway,” Yurya said.

“Hello,” the little girl said, approaching them. “How many in your party?”

“Two.”

“And how many—people—are you asking about? Dead people, I mean? I mean—maybe dead people?” The little girl was gasping a bit, like the responsibility of this was about to wreck her.

“Just one,” Una said.

“Do you have a…a personal object that belonged to this person?”

Una had heard just yesterday that this was necessary, and thank goodness she did have the book. She patted it, tucked under her arm. “Yes.”

“It will be seventy ilan.”

“Do I give it to you?” Una looked at the door, hoping to see an adult.

“Yes. This is my mother and father’s house.”

“You must be Mevria Dorga!” Yurya said.

“No! I’m Laira! Mevria didn’t want to do it!” the girl shot back. 

“A bit of a little sister complex. I understand.” Una counted out the seven ten-piece coins, and Laira ran back through the tall double doors, which they were now close enough to peer through a bit. The entrance room was grand, of course, with a lot of skulls, some of them trimmed with gilt, on the family altar because the senior Mr. Dorga was an eldest son and had surely inherited a lot of the prime bones of illustrious ancestors.

It was certainly hard not to feel a bit intimidated as they walked through the door, now the next in line as the doors to the parlor shut behind the older woman in front of them. There was a distinguished smell, probably related to the splendidly glossy dark wooden floors, and the old bones on the large family altar. They both stopped to bow at the altar and then stared up at the arched ceiling and around at the walls, which were covered in cloth wallpaper of a dim, dusty lavender color with a curling design of black velvet.

They could hear voices through the wall, and at this point, Una and Yurya were plunged into respectful silence. One of those voices must be Lord Gara himself.

Lord Gara was one of them, certainly, and most every Ven-Diri ended up seeing him once or twice, sooner or later. Even if you didn’t hire him to search for the dead, he sometimes begrudgingly turned up at a festival or funeral. Still, he retained a mythical aura.

His power came from the crystal Dor-Irin, which was housed in the Keeper’s castle and had been through generations of Keepers. The first Keeper had been traced back around eight hundred years and was believed to be a gift from the King of Avalon to his Ven-Diri compatriot, the necromancer Pol Alamont. Una had skimmed the definitive tome on the subject, “The Magic Seeps Into His Blood: A History of Lord Gara”, and had been particular fascinated by the idea of living with one of the great crystals.

It had apparently taken decades before Pol Alamont tapped into—or in some accounts, was stricken with—the crystal’s power, which allowed the Keeper to sense the passage of every dying soul into the spirit realms, and later—with some additional concentration—to pinpoint when, where, and how they had died.

The book claimed that Lord Gara was under a constant barrage of death; that at all times he could hear the cries of the dying and feel their final throes, but that it was a burden he had chosen in order to keep a constant and powerful connection with the worlds beyond. 

Una liked to imagine this was true and that under Lord Gara’s reserved exterior was the tormented drama of all the world’s dying souls.

The door to the parlor slowly swung open. “Lord Gara will see you now.” The lady of the house, Naravia Dorga, was standing between the candlelit parlor and the afternoon sunshine of the entrance room. She was not wearing draped sleeves, but the fashionable tight sleeves and gloves of sheer lace, her black gown clinging to her curves and her glossy black hair almost to her knees.

“Oh—thank you, Madam Dorga.” Suddenly Una’s heart was hammering as she bowed and Yurya tore her attention belatedly from the altar bones. Yurya was fond of any assortment of objects on a shelf, really, even family altars.

Inside the parlor, candles burned in a circle around Lord Gara’s chair, with two larger candelabras behind him for extra effect. Madam Dorga slipped out a side door, allowing them privacy.

“Good day,” he said.

Lord Gara was just sort of a face and hands in the shadows, his hair black and falling to his shoulders, his eyes lined with kohl. His robe was somehow enchanted with the magic of the great crystal and was black as a void, catching no light whatsoever. The book said the robe had been created by Pol Alamont himself and worn by every Keeper since as his one and only garment (besides, presumably, underthings). It never degraded because of its magic.

“Come here,” he said, beckoning with a hand. “Tell me, who are you looking for in the realms of Una-Calla?”

He was more imposing than Una expected, overall—not as gaunt or as ancient-seeming as she had anticipated. But his voice was low and gentle, as if he understood that this was a fraught time for anyone asking after their loved ones.

Or in this case, just…some boy whose job she had taken.

“I’m looking for…Varrie. Varrie Lumanar.”

“Lumanar?” Lord Gara raised an eyebrow. “Are you…betrothed?”

“No, not at all. I work at the bookstore where he worked and the customers are concerned.”

“His family didn’t come,” Lord Gara said, narrowing his eyes slightly.

“I’m—I’m sorry.” Una recoiled under that dark, powerful gaze. Maybe she had broken a rule without knowing it. 

“You shouldn’t be sorry,” Lord Gara said, and she realized with relief that it was the Lumanars that Lord Gara disapproved of. “And you have a personal possession of his?” he continued.

“Yes.” Una handed over the book.

“Frankenstein,” Lord Gara said, with surprise. “Did you read it?”

“Did you?” Una echoed his surprise.

“Yes, I have. A view into a very different world, but in the end our impulses are not dissimilar,” he said, and she nodded, but felt it was a rather sterile comment for such a tumultuous book.

But what else would one expect from Dormongara, one of the most devoted stewards of the ways of the Ven-Diri? Of course he would be dispassionate.

“And what did you think?” Dormongara asked.

“I thought…that poor monster,” Una said.

Dormongara nodded, as if he felt this answer was what he expected from her as well, even though she had tried so hard to sound serious, and not as if she had a crush on the monster.

“Varrie Lumanar…,” Dormongara murmured, brushing his fingertips across the cover of the book. He lifted his hand and the book opened of its own accord to that very page, with the underlined quote. 

Oh, great. Now he’ll think I’m the one who underlined it because I have a crush on the monster.

Then she suddenly remembered what she was really here for. Not to catch a glimpse of Dormongara, not to have a book club with him, but to find out when and how and if Varrie had died on the battlefield.

An unexpected and utterly chilling sensation slid down her entire body. Until this moment, she had convinced herself Varrie was still bumbling around in the south somewhere.

But maybe he wasn’t.

Braver and stronger men than Varrie had come home in a box.

Dormongara’s kohl-smudged eyes closed, and his fingers lifted as if to brush some invisible thread to the spirit world.

Varrie might not even get to come home. He might have died scared and alone, and she’d known this all along; she’d joked about it a few times, but…

He can’t die without telling me his opinion of Frankenstein, she thought, and inexplicably, she was shivering.

Chapter Four

The moments stretched on. Yurya softly patted her arm, which made her stiffen. She must have looked worried, and tried to smooth her expression.

When Dormongara finally opened his eyes and his hand lowered back to rest on the book, a light-headed feeling swept over her. Please, Dormon Uthra, she begged the god. Let that silly boy get to middle age, at least.

“He has not yet passed to Nar Calla,” Lord Gara said.

“Oh,” she breathed. “I knew it. Where is he?”

“If he is alive, he isn’t my business,” Lord Gara said. “But…I would imagine that if he went to fight in the south, he is probably either captured by the Kalanites, perhaps pressed into work, or more likely since prisoners of war have all been exchanged and they still prefer Fanarlem workers, he could be lost in the swamps. That last battle took place right near the great swamps. There are some isolated communities there, so if he was badly injured he might have recuperated in someone’s home. He would not have much access to messenger services.”

“I see…” Varrie, lost in a swamp. Una supplied the scene: dark trees with twisting branches and dripping moss, rising from a dark mist. A swamp witch who lived in a stilt-borne house. The smell of decay in slow waters. The cry of a strange bird with a long dagger of a beak, high up in the trees.

What if he had amnesia? If he were in a book, he would certainly have amnesia. Of course, certain potions could cause memory loss and it wasn’t impossible.

“Does that help?” Lord Gara asked, giving her a familiar look. She had been too busy imagining the swamp where Varrie would be recuperating (perhaps as the captive of the swamp witch) to keep life moving along.

“Yes. Everyone at the bookstore will be glad to know he isn’t dead yet,” she said.

“We have had enough casualties already,” Lord Gara said, gentle again as he handed the book back to her. “With any luck, he will make his way home before long.”

“Thank you, Lord Gara.”

Lady Dorga returned to show them out the back, to keep things moving right along, and now they were back in the brisk afternoon air. 

Una felt a little disoriented.

“Una, are you all right?” Yurya asked. “You got so pale when he was searching for Varrie. Are you worried he’s going to take your job? I bet the bookstore can keep both of you, with all these thrilling new books coming out. Business is good, isn’t it?”

“I’m not worried about that! As if I wished Varrie was dead just so I could work at the bookstore? You and Vi both, I swear… Do I seem that wicked?” Una sighed. “I guess it just feels so unfinished. He’s alive. But…his family isn’t going to look for him!”

“You don’t think, if you told them he’s alive…”

“If they weren’t even going to ask Lord Gara, I can’t imagine they’d look for him now. I know Varrie might end up taking this the wrong way, and thinking I am doing this out of a secret burning love for him. But I just can’t leave him to some terrible fate with no attempt to help him. What if he did come home all…broken?” Una had seen enough of that already, even with her brother. Dorr had mostly come out of it, but not everyone did.

“You’re right.” Yurya sighed too. “But it’s not like you can go south and look for him.”

“I know,” Una said, but her mind was already moving forward. “I am going south with my brother and Sorla, though. The Fanarlem rescue home is near the border and the site of the battle, I think.”

Yurya stared at her. “Is it, though?”

“I think it’s about…you know, maybe a few hours away.”

“How are you going to find Varrie in a swamp? Isn’t it huge and dangerous? And you don’t even know if he’s there. He’s definitely going to interpret that as a romantic gesture, supposing you did find him.”

“Too bad,” Una said. “I certainly won’t owe him anything if I save him from a swamp.”

“True. But the fact remains that it’s probably beyond your ability to save him from a swamp. You don’t even like getting dirty.”

That was sadly true.

Still, the thought lingered on every day leading up to this trip south. 

And then, she mentioned it at the bookstore. How could she not? Not a shift went by without some mention of Varrie.

Marisel was Una’s least favorite coworker, which was to say, she was okay. She loved books, like everyone else there, so Una couldn’t hate any of them. But she was beautiful and poised and newly married to a thoroughly dashing young man who got back to studying law as soon as he returned from the frontlines, and would come by and give her an immodestly deep kiss and call her his ‘Mabanna’, the one whose bones would share his grave.

It was possible Una was turning into a bitter person in her old age.

And when Marisel heard about Varrie, she gasped and said, “Oh, I wonder if Tanivel and I should go look for him!”

“No need,” Una blurted. “Me and my brother and my friends are already going south to look for him.”

As soon as she said it, she knew it was true. She could not go south without looking for Varrie. It wasn’t like she was about to chase him to the ends of the earth or anything, but they could certainly poke around the swamps. In books, there was always a local lad one could hire with a canoe.

“How exciting, then!” Marisel said. “Let us know if you need anything!”

Una knew what she needed. Traveling companions. Someone to bolster her spirits if the canoe tipped over. Sorla couldn’t go, because Fanarlem weren’t waterproof, and Dorr wouldn’t leave Sorla alone for a moment near the border. Besides, they were preoccupied with their new baby. Una needed a friend along.

It was about time Yurya was pried away from dusting her collection and got out on an adventure anyway.

Chapter Five

It had to be Yurya, because Una’s brother could not tolerate Brindy for very long. And asking Vi would bring up a host of sticky family issues, as her parents probably wouldn’t let her go without bringing it up to Varrie’s parents, and then the whole thing would get extremely awkward. Besides that, Una couldn’t imagine Vi in a swamp. 

But Yurya was a staunch companion. The faithful and practical servant Amu to Una’s Princess Alisandra, the faithful and practical Squire Merrgon to Una’s Vair ho’Alsan, Knight of the House of Roses, the faithful and practical Peri the horse…

(Well, all right, perhaps that was getting insulting. Not that she would mention any of this to Yurya.)

Really, Yurya’s only flaw as a faithful and practical companion was that she didn’t see much need to get out. She visited her friends, made a weekly trip to the doll shop just to talk to the other doll weirdos, and went to the big market once a month in hopes of getting something exotic. Una couldn’t bribe her with the prospects of swamp dolls, because that probably didn’t exist. 

All she could do was appeal to Yurya’s heart.

“Someone has to at least try. I mean, I wish it wasn’t me, but if his family isn’t going to bother, then it has to be me, doesn’t it? Because when I was at work, Marisel suggested that she and Tanivel could go look for him, and I just can’t…I mean, you know how she is! Everything is already so perfect for them, and then she would be the heroine of the bookstore and everyone there!” She wasn’t doing a very good job of appealing to Yurya’s heart, but she pressed on. “And it just makes sense, because Dorr is already going south and they’ve already invited me and there’s one more seat in the carriage, and he said you could have it, but you know it can’t be Brindy or Vi. Brindy would go in a heartbeat, but you know Dorr would quietly strangle her in her sleep after one day. You’d get to see a Fanarlem orphanage! That’s interesting, isn’t it? Although…maybe sad. But interesting. And then we won’t stay in the swamp for long, of course. I’m just going to get one of those cheap finding spells. If it points us anywhere, we’ll try it, and if not…” Yurya’s face was unreadable, so Una kept talking breathlessly.

“…and when we get back, I’ll buy you one outfit at the doll shop,” Una finally finished, about five minutes later.

“I’ll go,” Yurya said. “You don’t have to buy me anything.”

“When did you decide that!?”

Yurya smirked, bringing out her dimples. “I just wanted to see how long you could explain this without ever mentioning how much you miss Varrie Lumanar.”

“Stop it!”

“Oh, I am going to tease you about this forever.”

“I don’t! Gods! I can’t just let him die in a swamp, that’s all.”

“I am just not convinced that you would travel into a swamp for anyone you disliked. But it’s okay. Varrie is a nice man.”

Una raised an eyebrow, wondering exactly when Yurya had decided to upgrade Varrie from boy to man, but she said it in an utterly unromantic, Yurya-ish way. 

“It’s okay if you did like him,” Yurya added. “I think he’s very kind.”

“Kind!?” Una scoffed. “Since when would I like anyone kind? I would like someone with a romantic back story. Someone taller than Varrie, with more darkness in his eyes, a haunted demeanor. Of course he would have the capacity for kindness, but he wouldn’t be kind to just anyone. It would be reserved just for me and our children and his dearest friends, and with everyone else he would be gruff and vaguely foreboding.”

“Like Lord Gara,” Yurya said.

“Mm—um—well, not—sort of. He’s a little old for me.”

“So you want a twenty-five year old man who has a romantic back story and is gruff and foreboding.”

There was nothing to do but swat Yurya at this point. And then send her home to pack. They were leaving in just a few days.