![]() ![]() The Commandant tells the Aspirants that they will be tested for their courage, loyalty, strength of mind and heart, and cunning. Even after the Commandant beats her, Laia is still committed to spying on the Commandant and freeing her brother. Tribesmen are nomads who still believe in the ancient magic of the world. The Commandant abandoned Elias to the desert to die soon after his birth. She is also Elias’ mother, but the two hold no love for each other. In order to free her brother, Laia must become the slave of the Commandant of Blackcliff. Elias must compete against his rival, Marcus Marcus’ brother, Zak and Helene. The runner-up will become his Blood Shrike, the Emperor’s right-hand man and guardian. This is a series of life-threatening tests for four Masks. The following day, to his horror, instead of graduating from Blackcliff, Elias finds himself forced into the Trials. The Augur also tells Elias that if he does his duty, he has the chance to be free of the Empire and become a great man. The Augur warns him that even if he deserts, he will not be free and will become everything he hates - cruelty and evil. ![]() Although Elias has never believed the tales that Augurs are immortal and can see the future, he is unnerved by Cain’s uncanny ability to know his thoughts. On the night before Elias’ planned escape, an Augur named Cain visits him. He has kept his plans even from his best friend, Helene. Over the past year, he has dug out a tunnel in the catacombs by Blackcliff, the Mask training school. But it is a life he desperately wants to flee. Meanwhile, Elias is getting ready to become a Mask, the most feared of all soldiers in the Martial army. Their new leader, Mazen, agrees to free her brother if she will spy for them. When she finds them, the resistance wants only to drug her and cast her away, but Laia invokes the names of her parents, legends and former leaders of the resistance. When the Martials murder 17-year-old Laia’s grandparents and her older brother, Darin, is taken prisoner, Laia escapes into the catacombs under the city in hopes of finding the resistance and enlisting their help to free her brother. Since then, the Martials have ruled the land with an iron fist, subjugating the Scholars into poverty and sometimes slavery. Five hundred years ago, the Martials conquered the Scholars. ![]()
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