Song of Steel: Query letter selection
In SONG OF STEEL, we follow five characters—Jasper, Allira, Bastion, Darius, and Zaya—in a world where talents and abilities one doesn't yet possess can be bound to a person by the magic of soul coins. The opening chapters set forth a conflict with the mad king, Mizzix, who is on a quest to conquer the world and unite all the Songs (i.e. gods) under one banner.
But the king's secret desire is to not only unite the Songs, but to become them. And to do so, he's created a game. A tournament that promises a nine-cornered soul coin—the most powerful soul coin possible—to the winner. Jasper, a former footman in the king's army, who traded his rebellion against the king for a life of aristocracy (and hates himself for doing so), sponsors a group of four people into the king's game—a group that he's assembled from across the kingdom, a group that all has one thing in common: their undying hatred of King Mizzix. Jasper aims to win and use the power to do what he should have done in the beginning: kill the king.
But what Jasper doesn't know is that this game is a guise to transform the king into the Song of War. His team will have to win every match they play in the tournament if he wants to survive, and even if they win outright, there's no guarantee that a nine-cornered soul coin would be powerful enough to defeat the king, whose dark insanity is growing by the day. Jasper will have to rely on his group of rebels—an archer, two fighters, and a blind master of steel—to keep him alive long enough for his shot at redemption, and their chance to rid the world of the mad king.
But the king's secret desire is to not only unite the Songs, but to become them. And to do so, he's created a game. A tournament that promises a nine-cornered soul coin—the most powerful soul coin possible—to the winner. Jasper, a former footman in the king's army, who traded his rebellion against the king for a life of aristocracy (and hates himself for doing so), sponsors a group of four people into the king's game—a group that he's assembled from across the kingdom, a group that all has one thing in common: their undying hatred of King Mizzix. Jasper aims to win and use the power to do what he should have done in the beginning: kill the king.
But what Jasper doesn't know is that this game is a guise to transform the king into the Song of War. His team will have to win every match they play in the tournament if he wants to survive, and even if they win outright, there's no guarantee that a nine-cornered soul coin would be powerful enough to defeat the king, whose dark insanity is growing by the day. Jasper will have to rely on his group of rebels—an archer, two fighters, and a blind master of steel—to keep him alive long enough for his shot at redemption, and their chance to rid the world of the mad king.
Song of Steel: Sample Chapter
“Men will tell you not to cry,” Dawn Mother said. “That is not strength. It is denial. Cry. Then rise stronger than before the tears.”
Dawn Mother brushed Zaya’s cheek with her withered hand. Her knuckles—once soft and warm—were now as coarse as the sands themselves. “You leave here a girl. You enter the hunt a girl. You return a Sister.”
Zaya’s fist tightened around her lance. Upright in the sand, it stood a few fingers taller than her head. Narrow blades tipped both ends of the carefully weighted weapon. It was as agile and graceful a thing as Zaya herself.
A wilted look melted over Dawn Mother’s face. “Zaya Zamaal, you are the last girl in Tallaka. After tonight . . . when you return as a Sister . . . there will be no more girls.” She looked once more over the child she had trained and disciplined and taught and . . . raised for all of her sixteen years. “Are you ready?”
Zaya reached into her pouch and retrieved a carving she’d done the week before. It was a small sculpture, made from hardened jeeka root, softened in oil, and painted in her own blood. She handed the carving to Dawn Mother. “It is the bud of a lire flower. Long ago, you told me of the curiousness of the lire flower. You said it is the only flower that blossoms under drought and strengthens under disadvantage. I am small. I know. But I wish to be a lire flower. Like you."
Dawn Mother gave her a warm smile and then tucked the delicate carving into her own pouch.
“Return bathed in the blood of a rock boar, and you will be named Sister.”
Zaya nodded and mounted, Challa, her desert hound. Challa’s broad shoulders stood nearly as high as her own. The strong animal barely shifted under her weight, though . . . Zaya did not have much weight.
Zaya clucked her tongue, and the hound obediently departed, leaving Dawn Mother and the village behind her. Challa had been her hound as long as she could remember. It was tradition for the Ladies of the Sand each to grow with a desert hound. It taught them responsibility, companionship, trust, patience, and respect. She fed Challa, brushed her, comforted her, and loved her. And through the years, they’d formed an inseparable bond: hound and rider. They were each other’s protector—each other’s friend.
Together, they traveled. Dune after dune. It was two days to the first oasis. Challa drank for an hour. It was three days to the next one. Zaya drank for an hour. The days were blistering, and the nights were frigid. The deeper they traveled into the heart of the desert, the darker the sky became. It was a dark red, as if a blood-red cloud covered them, turning the color of the sand to crimson.
Deeper and deeper they journeyed—past ten oases. Zaya stopped counting days.
A rumble sounded in the distance.
Zaya’s eyes narrowed in on the horizon ahead. They’d gone beyond where voyagers should voyage. For this was the edge of the world. The Lightning Sea. It was a barren place of nothingness—away from dunes and oases—where constant lightning turned the flat sand into a floor of glass.
And toward the edge of the world, she rode.
Lightning struck the distant dunes. A single bolt. Then five. Then fifty. No rain accompanied the crooked fingers of death. Rain never did in the Lightning Sea. There was no need, as the lightning itself fell much like rain.
Zaya watched it in silence with Challa.
“Today, I become a sister,” she said to her friend.
She checked the lances on Challa’s sides. Challa bore four lances—two on each side. Zaya had practiced the Lightning Dance so many times with Dawn Mother, but never under the Lightning Sea. And now she was alone. No Matrons. No Mothers. No Sisters. Only Challa and her lances.
“Into the sea,” she whispered, leaping onto the creature and snapping the reins.
Challa bounded forward.
Even before reaching the Lightning Sea, Zaya began laying the lances if only to practice the steady cadence. She retrieved the first lance and threw it far ahead in a tall arc so that it struck the sand at only a small angle—standing tall in the flat desert. She threw a second lance. It landed beyond the first. Upon reaching the first lance, she plucked it from the sand and hurled it forward beyond the second. Soon, she fell into a smooth cadence of always keeping two to three lances anchored in the sand ahead of Challa.
Her heart flittered as she approached the Lightning Sea.
Throw, grab, throw, grab.
“I am a Lady of the Sand,” she chanted.
And then she entered the sea.
The bolts of lightning were loud—so very loud. Even through the ear wrappings that Dawn Mother had prepared her with, they were like the screams of shattering boulders.
Throw, grab, throw, grab.
Her hand quivered as she scooped up her next lance. “Guard me from the lightning,” she whispered to it.
The lance hit the sand and then, as if heeding her plea, stood straight as a bolt of lightning struck it. She reached the lance and pulled it free, feeling the crackle of glass that had formed around its tip from the lightning.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the lance. “Now, guard me again.”
She threw it forward just as the second lance ahead of her was struck.
Her breathing quickened, and she had to remind herself that Challa’s hooves were wrapped in four layers of leather so as to ward off the lightning. She carried no metal—but for the lances used to bait the bolts of lightning away from them both.
Lightning Dancing required at least two lances, but fighting the boar would require all four. The deeper into the sea she rode, the thicker the crust of glass that covered the sand became. Zaya hurled her lances high so they could impale the glass and anchor into the sand.
“It is time, Challa. Time to hunt.”
Zaya did not know why or how the rock boars lived in the Lightning Sea. What could there even be to eat out here?
In the distance, Zaya spotted a dark shape. Guiding Challa’s reins to the right, she narrowed in on the thing.
“I found you,” she said, the rockhide texture gaining detail.
A bolt of lightning struck the sand—just ahead of Challa’s nose. Challa swerved suddenly, rearing at the flash of light and sound. Zaya tried to hold the reins, but she was thrown from the saddle and landed hard against a thick glass floor.
“Challa!” she shouted, but the crashing of lightning around her was too loud, and the animal could not hear Zaya’s call. “Challa!”
Zaya looked at the lance a few steps away from her—still stuck in the sand. Running through the sea with a lance was suicide. But . . . if she left it here, she wouldn’t have enough lances to fight the boar.
She reached for the lance.
Lightning struck the lance just before she could reach it, and she pulled away.
No. She’d have to fight with three.
She got up and sprinted toward Challa, who spun in place, disoriented. Over and over, she screamed her companion’s name. Somehow, Zaya’s voice carried through the storm, and Challa heard her. The animal swerved around and headed toward Zaya. Zaya grabbed the edge of the harness, throwing her body on Challa’s back.
“To the boar,” she said, snapping the reins and pulling Challa to the left.
Challa moved forward, finally reaching the rock boar. It froze, staring at Zaya as if it knew why she was here. It was twice as big as Challa, and its skin was covered in obsidian scales. A single, black horn jutted up from its snout. Its eyes were small blue diamonds that glowed brightly even in the flashing light. It snorted once in challenge.
Dawn Mother’s words rang in her ears. “Plant three lances in a triangle as your arena. This will protect you from the lightning. Use your fourth lance to fight the boar.”
Zaya did so, though when her arena had been laid, she had no lance with which to fight. The rock boar entered the triangle as if aware of the boundaries and willing to accept the challenge. Its blue glowing eyes sent more fear through her nerves that she’d ever admit to herself.
It snorted again.
“You are a Lady of the Sands,” Zaya whispered to herself. “You are no girl today. You are a Sister.”
The boar rushed forward. It looked like a dark boulder. Lowering its horn, the boar steadied its razor-sharp tip, leveling it toward Zaya’s chest.
The heavy clomping of its hooves landed hard against the glass floor. It crackled the glass with every step closer. When its horn was two steps away from goring her, Zaya leaped to the right, barely dodging the obsidian skewer. She rolled back to a standing position. Her body was small, and her dive against the glass floor hadn’t even made a crack in its surface. The red cloud cover that tinted everything around her in crimson made the glass floor look like a lake of blood.
The boar snorted, looking around as if confused why a body wasn’t impaled on its great horn. It spun, finding her quickly, then snorted in frustration. It trampled the ground in place for a moment, breaking apart the glass, and planting its hooves for a better charge.
Zaya stumbled backward. She glanced at two of the lances—still stuck in the sand as lightning rods to form the far ends of the makeshift arena. Behind her—nearly within reach—was the third and final lance.
The boar charged again.
Zaya took a calculated step backward so that she was close enough to grab the third lance. When the boar was a single bound away from her, she reached for the lance.
Before her fingers could touch its steel, it erupted in lightning as a bolt struck the lance. Though she was not touching the metal, the buzz of electricity sizzled through her fingertips, her eyes, and her head, blurring her vision for a moment and making her head swim. The thunderclap was deafening, and its incomparable sound sent her stumbling.
She tried to move—tried to dodge the obsidian horn leveled at her chest. But she was a heartbeat too slow, and the horn struck the side of her shoulder. Its tip punctured muscle and ripped away flesh. Zaya screamed, falling to the sand.
Enraged, the boar began stomping the ground around her. Glass snapped and crumbled. She rolled from side to side, barely managing to avoid being trampled by the massive creature. Even from the ground, she could see into the startlingly bright, glowing eyes. It was as if they saw her—hated her—wanted nothing more than to grind her into the sand.
She moved just as one of the boar’s hooves smashed into the glass where her skull had been a fraction of a second earlier. Zaya scrambled away and ran toward the opposite end of the arena.
It took a moment for the boar to notice, but when it did, it readied its stance like before, and began to run.
Zaya headed toward the nearest lance in the triangular arena. The boar followed, barreling after her.
Its footfalls were so close. How could it have already crossed so much sand?
A patch of ground ahead of her glinted under the weak, red-tainted light. It was a smooth pool of glass. She leaped forward, diving headfirst toward the flat surface. Her body slid along the slick glass, carrying her the rest of the way to the lance. She grabbed the base of the weapon and let the momentum of her sliding body spin her around to the other side of it.
Just as the boar reached her, she stood and kicked the lance forward. The lance angled in the sand—right toward the boar’s blue glowing eye. The boar’s full weight launched into the lance tip, plunging the weapon through its skull.
Then, as if the Lightning Sea itself wished to add its blessing to the event, a bolt of lightning struck the spear, traveling through its shaft and inside the head of the rock boar.
Obsidian scales exploded in all directions. Zaya crouched, shielding herself from the rain of sharp black rocks. When she stood again, the boar was dead.
She stepped forward and lifted the massive obsidian horn that had broken free from the lightning strike. Had it not been for the bolt, Zaya would never have been able to break it away on her own. Sisters were required to return with proof of the kill. Most returned with obsidian scales. Some returned with the electric blue eyes. But no Sister had ever returned with a horn.
Dawn Mother brushed Zaya’s cheek with her withered hand. Her knuckles—once soft and warm—were now as coarse as the sands themselves. “You leave here a girl. You enter the hunt a girl. You return a Sister.”
Zaya’s fist tightened around her lance. Upright in the sand, it stood a few fingers taller than her head. Narrow blades tipped both ends of the carefully weighted weapon. It was as agile and graceful a thing as Zaya herself.
A wilted look melted over Dawn Mother’s face. “Zaya Zamaal, you are the last girl in Tallaka. After tonight . . . when you return as a Sister . . . there will be no more girls.” She looked once more over the child she had trained and disciplined and taught and . . . raised for all of her sixteen years. “Are you ready?”
Zaya reached into her pouch and retrieved a carving she’d done the week before. It was a small sculpture, made from hardened jeeka root, softened in oil, and painted in her own blood. She handed the carving to Dawn Mother. “It is the bud of a lire flower. Long ago, you told me of the curiousness of the lire flower. You said it is the only flower that blossoms under drought and strengthens under disadvantage. I am small. I know. But I wish to be a lire flower. Like you."
Dawn Mother gave her a warm smile and then tucked the delicate carving into her own pouch.
“Return bathed in the blood of a rock boar, and you will be named Sister.”
Zaya nodded and mounted, Challa, her desert hound. Challa’s broad shoulders stood nearly as high as her own. The strong animal barely shifted under her weight, though . . . Zaya did not have much weight.
Zaya clucked her tongue, and the hound obediently departed, leaving Dawn Mother and the village behind her. Challa had been her hound as long as she could remember. It was tradition for the Ladies of the Sand each to grow with a desert hound. It taught them responsibility, companionship, trust, patience, and respect. She fed Challa, brushed her, comforted her, and loved her. And through the years, they’d formed an inseparable bond: hound and rider. They were each other’s protector—each other’s friend.
Together, they traveled. Dune after dune. It was two days to the first oasis. Challa drank for an hour. It was three days to the next one. Zaya drank for an hour. The days were blistering, and the nights were frigid. The deeper they traveled into the heart of the desert, the darker the sky became. It was a dark red, as if a blood-red cloud covered them, turning the color of the sand to crimson.
Deeper and deeper they journeyed—past ten oases. Zaya stopped counting days.
A rumble sounded in the distance.
Zaya’s eyes narrowed in on the horizon ahead. They’d gone beyond where voyagers should voyage. For this was the edge of the world. The Lightning Sea. It was a barren place of nothingness—away from dunes and oases—where constant lightning turned the flat sand into a floor of glass.
And toward the edge of the world, she rode.
Lightning struck the distant dunes. A single bolt. Then five. Then fifty. No rain accompanied the crooked fingers of death. Rain never did in the Lightning Sea. There was no need, as the lightning itself fell much like rain.
Zaya watched it in silence with Challa.
“Today, I become a sister,” she said to her friend.
She checked the lances on Challa’s sides. Challa bore four lances—two on each side. Zaya had practiced the Lightning Dance so many times with Dawn Mother, but never under the Lightning Sea. And now she was alone. No Matrons. No Mothers. No Sisters. Only Challa and her lances.
“Into the sea,” she whispered, leaping onto the creature and snapping the reins.
Challa bounded forward.
Even before reaching the Lightning Sea, Zaya began laying the lances if only to practice the steady cadence. She retrieved the first lance and threw it far ahead in a tall arc so that it struck the sand at only a small angle—standing tall in the flat desert. She threw a second lance. It landed beyond the first. Upon reaching the first lance, she plucked it from the sand and hurled it forward beyond the second. Soon, she fell into a smooth cadence of always keeping two to three lances anchored in the sand ahead of Challa.
Her heart flittered as she approached the Lightning Sea.
Throw, grab, throw, grab.
“I am a Lady of the Sand,” she chanted.
And then she entered the sea.
The bolts of lightning were loud—so very loud. Even through the ear wrappings that Dawn Mother had prepared her with, they were like the screams of shattering boulders.
Throw, grab, throw, grab.
Her hand quivered as she scooped up her next lance. “Guard me from the lightning,” she whispered to it.
The lance hit the sand and then, as if heeding her plea, stood straight as a bolt of lightning struck it. She reached the lance and pulled it free, feeling the crackle of glass that had formed around its tip from the lightning.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the lance. “Now, guard me again.”
She threw it forward just as the second lance ahead of her was struck.
Her breathing quickened, and she had to remind herself that Challa’s hooves were wrapped in four layers of leather so as to ward off the lightning. She carried no metal—but for the lances used to bait the bolts of lightning away from them both.
Lightning Dancing required at least two lances, but fighting the boar would require all four. The deeper into the sea she rode, the thicker the crust of glass that covered the sand became. Zaya hurled her lances high so they could impale the glass and anchor into the sand.
“It is time, Challa. Time to hunt.”
Zaya did not know why or how the rock boars lived in the Lightning Sea. What could there even be to eat out here?
In the distance, Zaya spotted a dark shape. Guiding Challa’s reins to the right, she narrowed in on the thing.
“I found you,” she said, the rockhide texture gaining detail.
A bolt of lightning struck the sand—just ahead of Challa’s nose. Challa swerved suddenly, rearing at the flash of light and sound. Zaya tried to hold the reins, but she was thrown from the saddle and landed hard against a thick glass floor.
“Challa!” she shouted, but the crashing of lightning around her was too loud, and the animal could not hear Zaya’s call. “Challa!”
Zaya looked at the lance a few steps away from her—still stuck in the sand. Running through the sea with a lance was suicide. But . . . if she left it here, she wouldn’t have enough lances to fight the boar.
She reached for the lance.
Lightning struck the lance just before she could reach it, and she pulled away.
No. She’d have to fight with three.
She got up and sprinted toward Challa, who spun in place, disoriented. Over and over, she screamed her companion’s name. Somehow, Zaya’s voice carried through the storm, and Challa heard her. The animal swerved around and headed toward Zaya. Zaya grabbed the edge of the harness, throwing her body on Challa’s back.
“To the boar,” she said, snapping the reins and pulling Challa to the left.
Challa moved forward, finally reaching the rock boar. It froze, staring at Zaya as if it knew why she was here. It was twice as big as Challa, and its skin was covered in obsidian scales. A single, black horn jutted up from its snout. Its eyes were small blue diamonds that glowed brightly even in the flashing light. It snorted once in challenge.
Dawn Mother’s words rang in her ears. “Plant three lances in a triangle as your arena. This will protect you from the lightning. Use your fourth lance to fight the boar.”
Zaya did so, though when her arena had been laid, she had no lance with which to fight. The rock boar entered the triangle as if aware of the boundaries and willing to accept the challenge. Its blue glowing eyes sent more fear through her nerves that she’d ever admit to herself.
It snorted again.
“You are a Lady of the Sands,” Zaya whispered to herself. “You are no girl today. You are a Sister.”
The boar rushed forward. It looked like a dark boulder. Lowering its horn, the boar steadied its razor-sharp tip, leveling it toward Zaya’s chest.
The heavy clomping of its hooves landed hard against the glass floor. It crackled the glass with every step closer. When its horn was two steps away from goring her, Zaya leaped to the right, barely dodging the obsidian skewer. She rolled back to a standing position. Her body was small, and her dive against the glass floor hadn’t even made a crack in its surface. The red cloud cover that tinted everything around her in crimson made the glass floor look like a lake of blood.
The boar snorted, looking around as if confused why a body wasn’t impaled on its great horn. It spun, finding her quickly, then snorted in frustration. It trampled the ground in place for a moment, breaking apart the glass, and planting its hooves for a better charge.
Zaya stumbled backward. She glanced at two of the lances—still stuck in the sand as lightning rods to form the far ends of the makeshift arena. Behind her—nearly within reach—was the third and final lance.
The boar charged again.
Zaya took a calculated step backward so that she was close enough to grab the third lance. When the boar was a single bound away from her, she reached for the lance.
Before her fingers could touch its steel, it erupted in lightning as a bolt struck the lance. Though she was not touching the metal, the buzz of electricity sizzled through her fingertips, her eyes, and her head, blurring her vision for a moment and making her head swim. The thunderclap was deafening, and its incomparable sound sent her stumbling.
She tried to move—tried to dodge the obsidian horn leveled at her chest. But she was a heartbeat too slow, and the horn struck the side of her shoulder. Its tip punctured muscle and ripped away flesh. Zaya screamed, falling to the sand.
Enraged, the boar began stomping the ground around her. Glass snapped and crumbled. She rolled from side to side, barely managing to avoid being trampled by the massive creature. Even from the ground, she could see into the startlingly bright, glowing eyes. It was as if they saw her—hated her—wanted nothing more than to grind her into the sand.
She moved just as one of the boar’s hooves smashed into the glass where her skull had been a fraction of a second earlier. Zaya scrambled away and ran toward the opposite end of the arena.
It took a moment for the boar to notice, but when it did, it readied its stance like before, and began to run.
Zaya headed toward the nearest lance in the triangular arena. The boar followed, barreling after her.
Its footfalls were so close. How could it have already crossed so much sand?
A patch of ground ahead of her glinted under the weak, red-tainted light. It was a smooth pool of glass. She leaped forward, diving headfirst toward the flat surface. Her body slid along the slick glass, carrying her the rest of the way to the lance. She grabbed the base of the weapon and let the momentum of her sliding body spin her around to the other side of it.
Just as the boar reached her, she stood and kicked the lance forward. The lance angled in the sand—right toward the boar’s blue glowing eye. The boar’s full weight launched into the lance tip, plunging the weapon through its skull.
Then, as if the Lightning Sea itself wished to add its blessing to the event, a bolt of lightning struck the spear, traveling through its shaft and inside the head of the rock boar.
Obsidian scales exploded in all directions. Zaya crouched, shielding herself from the rain of sharp black rocks. When she stood again, the boar was dead.
She stepped forward and lifted the massive obsidian horn that had broken free from the lightning strike. Had it not been for the bolt, Zaya would never have been able to break it away on her own. Sisters were required to return with proof of the kill. Most returned with obsidian scales. Some returned with the electric blue eyes. But no Sister had ever returned with a horn.