Chaos Song, the fourth book in The Great Legend Chronicles, officially launched earlier this month! To celebrate we’re sharing a preview of the second chapter of the book in this week’s blog. Check it out below!

— Duncan

Chaos Song Chapter Two

 Avad’s mind hadn’t stopped reeling since he’d walked out of One Central and straight into impossibility. Abavla Blackstarr, Solstice’s long dead father, was alive.

Clouds hung overhead like low-flying portal ships as Avad and Abavla walked down the streets of District One. A rumble of thunder echoed off the cream-colored skytowers and damp cobblestone roads. The sound carried Avad back to last evening, when he had lost Solstice. He’d run and slid in pouring rain down the broken, muddy road to get to her. Before his eyes, a hulking rarlatan had hauled her into a portal, and the blue vortex had snapped shut. For an eternity, he’d stood horrified in the growling storm. Solstice was gone.

He glanced sideways at the old man beside him. Solstice was gone, but mere hours later her father had appeared. He claimed he was here to help find his daughter, but Avad wasn’t sure yet. Abavla Blackstarr was a mass murderer of incredible power. Though Solstice had long argued that he was a changed man, Avad couldn’t trust that. She’d been a child when she had last seen him. Children believed all sorts of things about their parents, not knowing any better.

One thing Avad didn’t doubt was that this old man was indeed Blackstarr. His eyes gave him away. Avad knew black eyes like those all too well in his wife and son. He had the same wild hair as well as an uncanny resemblance to Narlon, despite being a human. And, Avad thought with unease, the three Blackstarr kin had keen, critical stares that were the only window to the whirling machine of thoughts inside. Not to mention that the old man was the right age. He had to be in seventies, which was fairly old for a human. From the way he moved, though, Avad could guess Abavla was fit, maybe even still in fighting shape. Hopefully Avad wouldn’t have to find out.

Abavla broke the silence. “Where are you taking me, out of curiosity?”

Avad gave him a wary look. “Somewhere safe to talk.”

From the moment his shock had ebbed away, questions had been climbing to mountainous proportions inside Avad’s head. First, how had Abavla escaped the prison of Kalkathar? The fortress had been shut down almost thirty years ago when the truth of the Purges had been unveiled. Where in the four moons had he been for all this time?

Several tense moments later, he led the way into a large city park teeming with people. Tall shade trees with vivid summer leaves ringed the grassy block, and spread throughout the tidy gardens were elaborate fountains each dedicated to one of the ten rarlatan tribes—Leadership, Power, Strength, Night, Wisdom, Joy, Water, Air, Energy, and Speed. A medley of humans, spirits, and rarlatans strolled along the paths between the fountains. No one would pay Avad and Abavla any attention in a busy public space like this—and if Abavla had some trick up his sleeve, it would be far harder to pull off here. Bright Blades patrolled along the walkways in regular circles.

The old human nodded as if he approved the choice of the park. “I see. Fair enough.”

Avad didn’t stop walking until they reached the fountain tribute to the Leadership Tribe, which took up several square yards in the middle of the park. He chose a bench facing the path winding around the fountain in a circle, so it was easy to watch Abavla and where the nearest patrols were. Abavla took a seat, but Avad remained standing.

As Avad cast heavy layers of muffling spells around them, he couldn’t help noticing that Abavla seemed unruffled by his distrustful precautions. It gave him the bad feeling that the old man felt totally in control here.

Be careful, Avad. He might want to help find Solstice . . . or he might be trying to get his notes on the Su’daran back. For all Avad knew, years in Kalkathar had reawoken Blackstarr’s plot against the nation that had done him so much wrong. Then again, why would he need his own notebook? He already knew the curse to control Narlon. As he thought it, a cool wave of nausea rose in Avad’s stomach. He can enslave my son with a few words. Was Solstice right that her father had changed for the good? If she weren’t, the most dangerous man in Siraden and its four moons sat right in front of him. If he controlled Narlon, he controlled all of Arvelak and the largest military force that had ever existed.

Snakemen’s Eyes.

The only way forward was asking questions. Avad might be able to feel out the old man’s motivations.

“You said you’re here because you want to find Solstice. You’ll have to forgive me, but I have a lot of questions.”

“I expected as much.” Abavla folded his arms. “I’ll answer any I can. If we’re going to find her, we need a mutual understanding of one another.”

At least he was cooperative. “Good. Let’s start with the basics. How are you alive? All reports say you died in Kalkathar.”

Abavla’s jaw clenched at the name of the old fortress. “I nearly did, thanks to a backfired spell. My captors had given me an ultimatum—make them a soldier that Drishden could control or watch them rape and torture my daughter in front of me. He claimed that he had her at Kalkathar.”

Avad’s mouth twisted. Abavla’s captors had been Avad’s family—his grandfather Drishden, his uncle Juran, and his cousin Kristjana. It never grew less painful to hear how hideous they had been. He folded his arms. “I know about the controllable soldier, the Su’daran. No need to explain that part.”

Abavla nodded. “Yes, the Su’daran. I never delivered one to him.” A thin smile reached his lips. “I gave him all manner of false hopes over the years. His patience ran out at last, though I wasn’t sure why. Unfortunately for Drishden, I knew he was lying.”

“How?”

The old man studied Avad for a few long, unnerving seconds. “You won’t believe me, I’m afraid.”

“Tell me anyway.”

He shrugged. “I had a vision that she was safe and protected. It was the first one I’d gotten like it in fifteen years. I suspect that is partly because the gods no longer love me overly much, and partly because I . . . wasn’t in a fit state to receive and interpret such things.” Shadows pulled the wrinkles in his face into sharp lines but he didn’t elaborate. “Before that vision, I could never dismiss any threats against my family. When they took me, Drishden told me that if I tried to kill any of my captors or escape, he would kill Imanna and Solstice. He had assassins at the ready who, if they didn’t receive regular reports from the fortress staff and Drishden, would strike.

“I didn’t have a clear idea of where I was, but I was assured that I was too far away to kill them then reach Imanna and Solstice in time. If I thought to kill all the soldiers except for one to keep sending the reports, I wouldn’t know their codes. They may have given the order to strike instead of telling the assassins to continue standing down. Additional daily code words further complicated the matter.” Abavla let out a sigh that sounded more like a growl. “As you can surmise, I was thoroughly trapped. Whatever power I had was nothing, if a thousand miles away someone could simply cast a spell and kill the people I loved.”

Avad realized he was listening with a hand covering his mouth and lowered it. Abavla’s quiet, angry tone had somehow made him feel like he was in the same trap, desperate for a loophole he couldn’t find. His grandfather had indeed been thorough to the last.

“But when you . . . had this vision, you decided you could escape?”

“Yes. I pretended to buckle and give them the last piece I’d been withholding from the puzzle of making a Su’daran. Drishden and several soldiers gathered to watch the experiment, in which I would inject a mutagenic potion into one of their volunteer soldiers and transform him into a Su’daran. Instead of doing that, though, I attacked them.”

Avad swallowed. “They said the soldiers throughout the fortress were dead, with no sign of injuries.”

The old man looked into the distance, his back bowing a little. “I cast a curse on them. It is a terrible thing I never wanted to do again, but . . . I did what I had to.”

Regret hung heavy in his tone. All the same, hearing the tale of how his grandfather had died from the lips of the man who’d murdered him left a surreal haze over Avad’s thoughts— though to be honest, Avad no longer cared about Drishden and hadn’t for decades.

“This curse was . . . Iyani?” That had always been Solstice’s guess, when they’d gotten the report of the massacre in Kalkathar.

“Yes.” Abavla paused. “You know what I am, I take it.”

“Solstice told me.”

Abavla Blackstarr was one of the Alarri, a group of legendary warriors who were supposed to tell people their destinies and manipulate fate . . . or something like that. When Solstice told her stories, Avad had always paid more attention to the details about their physical powers, like speaking words of power called Iyani. It’s the holy language of the Beings Above, according to the stories. Specially gifted people like the Alarri can use its power for all kinds of things, from battle to healing. I saw my father turn crossbow bolts to sand, and Dragon Maiden once saved me from falling with a word.

“You said something backfired, when you started explaining,” said Avad. “What does that have to do with how you got free?”

“It’s the crux of the matter. I’d missed two of the guards on patrol outside the fortress. They came in when they heard the disturbance, and they attacked me. I tried the same curse again, and though it ended their lives, one of them reached me in time to land a blow with his sword. I mispronounced the end of the word, and the power I’d unleashed backfired. I’m afraid I only have theories as to what happened afterward. I don’t remember anything else until about eight years ago, when I woke up.

“I was in a shattered crystal, as best I could tell, in the lower levels of Kalkathar. You’d imagine that a death curse backfiring would instead kill me, the speaker, but the result of my mishap put me into hibernation inside walls of crystallized energy, not unlike a solid magic weave a String Theorist can make.”

Avad held up a hand. “Let me get this right. You took down all of Kalkathar’s soldiers with two words then trapped yourself in a solid rock of magic for decades.”

His eyebrows flattened. “I live in a perpetual state of irony, I’m afraid.”

Apparently. “And what, exactly, woke you up? Or did it just happen one day?” If you tell me it was destiny, I’m going to struggle with that.

“Someone disturbed the cocoon of magic,” Abavla said. “I don’t know who, but I have a feeling it was by accident. They weren’t there when I came to. I have a bad feeling it was someone looking for clues about my work for Drishden. That is, the Su’daran.”

Avad began pacing in front of the bench. “So, you got out of Kalkathar, but you never saw who was sneaking around?”

“No.”

No leads there, then. “And what about now?” Avad’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know Solstice was kidnapped? The only people who know are the Bright Blades and me. It just happened last night.”

“I sensed she was in danger,” Abavla replied. “I also sensed you were my best chance of finding her.”

Maybe it was the stress of last night watching Solstice vanish and his old friend, Keiyar, die in blood and fire in front of him, but his temper flared. Avad brushed past the vagaries of how Abavla “sensed” all this information and said, “So now you want to protect Solstice? She’s been in danger a thousand times before. Where were you then?”

He flinched. “I wanted to be there but I couldn’t be.”

“You couldn’t?” Incredulity rang from his voice. “You’ve been free for eight years. Years. She’s spent her life looking for you, yet you’ve never come until now?” All those countless hours and dangers Solstice had endured for this man, all the heartache thinking he was gone, and for nearly a decade he’d been alive and free. It was cruel.

Abavla mouth fell open a little. “She looked for me?”

“Yes,” Avad said, though he calmed his voice. The pain and hope clouding the old man’s eyes was cooling his indignant anger. “You should have gone to her.”

“I couldn’t,” he said again. “By the time I got free, someone had tampered with my pocket portals while I’d been unconscious. The book that had my notes on the Su’daran project was stolen. I’ve been searching for it ever since.”

“The book? Why do you want the book? You know the curse already.”

Abavla turned his dark eyes away. “I know the words, yes, but it’s not enough to figure out how to rid Narlon of the curse for good.”

That brought Avad up short. “You’re trying to undo it?”

“Yes.” An ocean of remorse weighed down his voice. “I’ve forgotten the intricacies and how it interacts with his body and mind. What I made in one blind, foolish moment is not easy to unmake. And beyond that, I don’t want the book in anyone else’s hands.”

Avad almost didn’t hear him. He’d never imagined there might be a way to free his son from the curse. If Abavla could . . . Unbidden hope squeezed in among the racket of confusion inside his head. We could save him.

“I couldn’t face Solstice without an answer of how to save her son. Maybe I was wrong. I don’t know.” He sighed then looked Avad in the eyes. “I’m here now and I will find her, but I need your help, Avad. Dead Eyes has the notes, but I’ve been looking for him for years without success. With your connections and my abilities and contacts, I believe we can find where he has her, though.”

So that’s why Blackstarr wanted him—political connections. That can’t be all he wants. It’s too simple.

“What else?”

“What else?” Abavla lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t have any other allies left to me but family, Avad, so I’ve come to you. I can trust that we have the same goals, and I daresay you have an excellent track record of uncovering dangerous secrets.”

“And I had half-expected you to tell me I had some kind of destiny.”

“Oh, you have that as well, but I think you prefer my more mundane rationale for finding you.” He smirked, looking more like Narlon than ever. “Am I right?”

“I prefer things that make sense, if that’s what you mean.”

“We’re of a same mind, then.”

Right. This from the man who admitted to seeing visions and just “sensing” Solstice was in trouble.

Taking a step back, Avad studied Abavla and weighed his options. He sat with that unruffled look from earlier. Meanwhile, Avad’s thoughts sped through his mind. He didn’t need Abavla’s help to find Solstice, not when he had Trotak and the Bright Blades, but if Abavla could save Narlon from the curse he’d written into him . . . Avad had to keep him close by. Abavla had seemed genuine about that—and about everything, actually. Decades in the Council Building had taught Avad how to see through lies, even in strangers. He wasn’t the naïve corporal he’d been as a youth, trusting people like Drishden at their word. Abavla Blackstarr, much like his daughter, was an open book of emotions. If there had been any malice in him, it would have shone straight out of those black eyes like a beacon.

That doesn’t mean I can trust him.

No, but trust wasn’t a factor right now. More than anything, Avad knew what Abavla meant to Solstice. If he let her beloved, long-lost father go, he’d never be able to live with himself.

He blew out a breath and held his hand out to Blackstarr. “Let’s find her.”