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"In red our hearts shine."

Darjin began to chant.

The air whipped against her face as the Tamer's words rang faintly in her ears, drowned out by the roar of the currents that ruled the skies.

"When I let go, close your eyes and begin the chant. At the last word, open them. And release your blades."

With her arms crossed around her torso and her legs tensed, she flew down. Straight as an arrow. Then, quickly between her stolen breaths, the last words of the song left her lips.

"As lovers to war, they toast."

She opened her eyes wide and instinctively lowered them, feeling a wave of anticipation and anger pass through her, shocked at what she saw.

The dome was there, a few fathoms below her, huge, beautiful, richly ornamented. Intact.

A blink of an eye later, the curved glass window exploded. Struck by the orb the Tamer had thrown, it turned into a cloud of shiny splinters.

Darjin covered her face with one hand and flew through what was left of the dome. Incredulous that she had hit the target, she struggled to keep her mind.

She brought her eyes to the combination of symbols on the Shield Band and blinked as she passed from daylight into the darkness of the rock-cut tower.

Three clicks back to stop the fall.

She brushed against the Band and felt it click. Then she curled up into a ball and prayed that the Tamer really knew what he was talking about, that he had not sent her to her death. But it was too late to regret listening to him.

The floor beneath her was barely lit by torches hanging from the walls. And she was approaching at an insane speed. The Band vibrated and time seemed to turn into a sluggish, sticky river. But the fall was actually slowing. It wasn't just perceptions bent by fear.

Darjin prepared her body to absorb the landing as much as possible.

The roar of the impact with the ground stung her ears. The landing was violent, to be sure, but no more so than a thousand others she had performed for years. In a way she could not even hope to comprehend, the Band had converted her weight and the speed of her fall into sound. The noise, in turn, rippled around her like a wave.

As she regained her feet, she saw the effect of the impact on her surroundings. A series of cracks branched out from where she had touched the ground. They spread around her like the claws of a hungry beast, reaching out to touch the circular colonnade.

She felt a tremor.

The Band had performed a miracle. It had allowed her to survive this madness. But at what cost? It seemed as if the rock itself, down there, was shaking with pain.

Darjin narrowed her eyes and looked around, trying to choose a direction to go in search of Shadi.

Then she saw the victims.

There were dozens of them. They littered the perimeter of the room, some lying on the floor, some sitting with their backs to the columns, some thrown against them so violently that they had created niches of bloody stone.

Were they the Ashen Shields?

Darjin felt disgust run through her. The Tamer had hinted at the offensive capabilities of the Shield Band. But what she saw, the aftermath of that incredible fall and its shock wave, was a massacre. These men had been decimated in an instant.

But they were not alone, of course.

An excited clamor rang out within the walls, followed immediately by the sound of feet scuffling. They came from the right, approaching quickly.

She touched the Shield Band.

Three clicks forward to activate the defenses.

On the third click, Darjin moved into the shadows offered by the colonnade and drew her blades.

There were three of them, all much taller than her and definitely more muscular. They wore dark robes from head to toe. Even their legs and arms, clad in armor plates, avoided the dim light of the torches. The three had their faces uncovered, their expressions lost in a mixture of fear and wonder. Two of them ran to examine the bodies of their comrades, bathed in their own blood or set like macabre sculptures in the colonnade. Darjin felt a twinge in her gut the moment she saw the terror painted in their eyes.

The remorse was short-lived. But those moments were enough for her to imagine what these men were capable of. They were kidnappers, no doubt. And judging by the amount of weapons they were carrying, skilled killers as well.

The horror of what they might have already done to Shadi made her heart freeze.

Darjin shook her head and dismissed the thought. While the two of them talked excitedly and watched the corpses, she moved from column to column, as fast as a cat and even quieter. She eyed the corridor they had come from and acutely listened. A rumble of footsteps, not far away, grew louder. There must be at least five or six others.

One of the first three men to arrive had held the others back a few paces and now stood with his arms crossed over his chest. He watched the massacre with a shake of his head. The air of superiority identified him as the higher ranking of the three. The most troublesome.

Darjin left one column behind and took the shelter offered by the next one. She now stood behind the man with crossed arms. She calculated that she could take him down in an instant and get rid of the rest of the men in about the same time.

Then the others would come.

She did not know for sure how many there were, what kind of weapons they carried, and she could not count on the same kind of surprise she had just exploited. Surviving the attack would be difficult. Maybe impossible.

She closed her eyes.

"In red our hearts shine. As lovers of war they toast," she whispered.

Then she emerged from the shadows.

She dashed toward the enemy and knelt two steps behind him. She reached him by sliding across the polished pavement, producing a faint, barely audible sound, like a dropped silk cloth. With the knife, she performed a horizontal slash from right to left. The blade severed the ligaments behind the man's knees. The scream that followed would have rattled the glass dome had it not already been pulverised by the Tamer.

Darjin raised the blade she held in her other hand and broke the man's fall. Unable to stand, overwhelmed by blind pain, he slumped to the side, eyes wide open as the weapon pierced his throat.

She silently prayed that her opponent would find peace and leave the pain of death behind to rejoin his loved ones. Then she released the blade and somersaulted as the other two men turned, their eyes ready to pop out of their sockets in surprise.

She unfolded in front of them. Before the nearest man could reach for the sword at his belt, she ran a dagger from his right hip to his navel. She caught the other man's right hand and severed two of his fingers before he could reach for a weapon. A moment later, he clutched the bloody limb and bent over, groaning.

Darjin used the weight of that movement to drive a blade into his chest. The thick leather protecting him made the penetration difficult, so she pirouetted and kicked the blade deep into his breastbone.

The man looked at her, eyes wide, as he fell to the ground.

Darjin bent down, picked up the blade, and cleaned away the blood that stained it. Then she wiped her forehead and turned away as a dozen more men filled the circular room, running and shouting, burning with rage.

Four of them ran straight at her. The others split left and right, running behind the colonnades until they reached her back, no doubt to surround her.

Darjin lifted the arm that held the Shield Band and stopped it between her breastbone and stomach. She saw the air immediately in front of her flicker like distant horizons, glowing with the heat of the warm weather, then gaining texture until it almost took on thickness.

Forward three clicks to activate defenses.

The Tamer's words rang in her ears as she finally understood what they really meant. The Band created an almost invisible shield in front of her.

Darjin held it up, gritting her teeth, and used it to block the first man's attack, which seemed to hit nothing and then bounce off, propelled by a force far more violent than his furious rush. She saw him bowl over two of his comrades and fall to the ground with them. They lost consciousness as if they had fallen off a cliff. Meanwhile, she raised her shield against the fourth man, but tilted it so that it deflected the attack against the next column to her left. And so it was. The man collided with the target, shaking it as if it were the center of a small earthquake. One more hit like that and the integrity of this entire underground structure would be irreparably compromised.

"After two attacks, you will have to wait. The band is not omnipotent. Give it time to draw on the power of the gods again."

Darjin turned slowly, her eyes fixed on the other men around her. She prayed for time to run faster and for the Band to regenerate the impossible energy that powered her.

After seeing her cut down her comrades, the anger of the men around her seemed to subside. They were cautious, brandishing their weapons as if hoping to find refuge in them.

"Who are you?"

Darjin turned again, searching the face of the man who had spoken. She met his eyes. They were as dark as his skin. His voice was determined, firm, and had betrayed no uncertainty. But the beads of sweat on his brow told a different story.

Darjin decided to put pleasantries aside.

"What about the girl? Where is she?"

The man narrowed his eyes. Then a thin smile crossed his face. "The girl? Is that really what you're looking for? A girl?" he taunted her.

She did not like the answer. It could have been dictated by a desire to distract her or aimed at testing her loyalty to whoever had sent her there.

"Shadi Jan Hura. Give her to me now and no one else will die."

The man laughed. But only with his mouth, perhaps more to encourage his men than to show contempt for her.

"You are brave, woman. I know why. This is not the first time I have met a Dagger. I have heard many stories of your people. What you just did," he said, looking at the bodies around him, "is incredible." He said this in recognition of Darjin's mastery, but also as a challenge. "But you're wrong if you think we're going to back down. You can't stop us. You cannot smother the flames of freedom that will burn this world."

And so they had decided to attack. Darjin was not surprised. Whoever they were, whatever prize they thought they would get at the end of their fight must have been so attractive that it blinded them.

How could they be sure to survive what was to come? How could they really hope to face the armies of the Masters themselves?

Darjin found herself torn, if only for a few moments, between her inability to understand what drove these men and her desire to know. They challenged the established order of things. Shadi's abduction alone was enough to warrant the death penalty for each of them, but it seemed that the situation was even more serious than she had imagined.

How many girls had they taken? How many families had they defied? And how many of them were truly willing to die for the cause?

She wanted to ask a thousand more questions, and was ready to accept a reasonable answer to even one of them.

She felt a shiver in the depths of her soul, a sigh as cold as the nights of the Peaks. What was happening was a door. It was the entrance to a new reality.

Was there a real chance that all this would go unnoticed?

Darjin shook her head.

The kidnapping would change everything. Her world was on the brink of an end; at the same time, it was on the brink of a beginning. She could not know if the future world that awaited her, that awaited everyone, would be better or worse. But she didn't care, not really. She just wanted Shadi to see it, to be free to experience it and make her own decisions without a knife at her throat.

She took a deep breath as she heard the ticking of the Shield Band. It was almost ready.

She released her breath and spoke. "Your threats do not interest me. I'm only here for the girl. Everything else doesn't exist for me. Decide now. Her life or yours."

The dark-skinned man seemed to weigh Darjin's words, then looked at his companions. First to the right, then to the left. He nodded. And his men attacked.

Shadi was filled with an emptiness, an absence that she could not clearly describe. For she could not think in a way that made sense. Maybe she could not even breathe. Her body surrendered to nothingness. Unable to remember even the simplest concepts, she tried to find the strength to hold on to something. Anything at all.

Air, you need air, she told herself.

The realization of what she had just done came soon after.

You're talking to yourself.

You are insane.

You are weak, lonely and insane.

She recognized her own voice. Even though those words had not been spoken, even though they had not come from her lips, they echoed in her mind like the bitterest of rebukes. She obeyed the order, chuckling at the creeping judgment and mockery she had reserved for herself.

So she drew a painful, primal breath.

She coughed so hard that the next breath brought more pain.

But the agony was brief.

The air found its way into her, then out of her body. The cycle repeated itself with a spontaneity that seemed inconceivable to her just moments before. Even her heart slowed down a little.

Shadi put a hand to her throat as she slowly opened her eyes. She found that she had sunk into a soft surface that enveloped her. A couch?

She moved her head to the right, then to the left, feeling the moisture on her forehead and neck, then tried to sit up and groaned as dizziness clawed at her temples. Searching for some reason not to give in to the confusion and keep herself from drifting off, she spread her arms wide and rested them on the swollen feather pillows. Gradually, or perhaps after several hours, she could not be sure, the confusion began to fade. Her face buried in her hands, she remained prey to a thousand questions. Had she fallen asleep? Had she fainted?

She tried to pay attention to her surroundings. What she saw cleared her mind a little. The large tapestry depicting the Masters towered at the far end of the room. The candles that lit it were about to go out. Then, with the force of a slap, reality hit her.

Kerina's screams. The darkness.

The hands that had gripped her so tightly that she almost cried out in pain. The dark cell, the hustle and bustle of young women being pushed and abused by those dark-clothed men.

Shadi shook her head, trying to chase the memory away, but immediately regretted it. Stronger than before, the dizziness took her breath away. Fighting not to moan, she clenched her teeth and ran trembling hands through her hair. Words floated across the jagged surface of her memories. Words she had heard spoken recently, of course. But by whom? What had she really heard? Why had she been taken to this room? Who was she supposed to meet?

Noises distracted her. Voices. There were many of them, nervous, perhaps frightened.

She moved to the edge of the sofa. With desperate slowness, fearing she would still fall victim to dizziness, she placed her feet on the cold stone. The contact reminded her of Roben's room, the silks and pillows that covered his bed. And his candlelit eyes, his reassuring voice. She missed him so much.

Even her mother's attention, so icy, stern and often indecipherable, now seemed stolen from her.

She longed for her father's gaze, lost in worries he did not share with her. She prayed that they were safe, that no harm had come to them from their captors.

What were the chances that these men had not shed innocent blood, that they had simply taken her and the other girls? The truth of this conjecture pierced her heart and filled her eyes with tears.

More screams, this time louder and more insistent, came from the other side of the room, behind the wooden door that seemed to have been erected as a wall between her and freedom. She had entered the space from there, she was sure of it. She remembered the sound of her own footsteps, the rustle of her robes on the floor and the way the sounds had reflected off the narrow walls.

Was there another entrance? Another exit?

She got to her feet, staggered for a moment, then looked around. Beyond the large sofa, on the same wall, were curtained windows. She approached the first one, walking on tiptoe, wondering what had happened to her shoes. Had she worn them when she was locked up with the other girls? And when they had dragged her into this room? Why did these details escape her? And why could she not remember how she had ended up on that couch? Worry poisoned her palate and slowed her steps even more.

When she reached the drapes that concealed the first window, she stood motionless, at the mercy of doubts and fears that had no certain name.

What did she think she could do?

What did she think she would find beyond that window?

Did she really believe she could escape?

But the answer was right there, wasn't it?

She stretched out her arms and parted the curtains, pushed herself close to the wooden shutters and threw them wide open. The stone wall almost seemed to laugh in her face. This architectural sneer mocked the doubts and hopes she dared not voice.

Why would anyone go to the trouble of making fake windows? Had they always been like this, oppressed by the rock? And were they all? She hurried to pull back the other curtains, one by one, only to discover more blind windows. She reached the last one, at the corner of the wall where the door had opened. She paused to caress the rock with her eyes.

It didn't make sense. She couldn't understand it.

The growing frustration made her knees shake. And she was certain that she would never set foot outside these walls. Not alone. Not free.

She put her hands on her hips and let her eyes wander over the room, filled with whispered questions. The weight of the rich robes she wore was so sadly ironic under the circumstances.

She contemplated tearing off her corset and long sleeves when she caught sight of a low marble table at the far end of the room. It looked familiar, but she could not explain why. As she approached it, she noticed the dark cloth lying half on the stone and half on the floor. What had it covered? What was it hiding?

It was at that moment that she caught sight of the window on the far wall of the room. The darkness framing it was so deep as to hide it from her eyes, and the curtain covering it was thicker than all the others.

Shadi circled the table, burning with a creeping perception and anticipation of an answer she may not have really wanted. She made her way through the cascade of fabric, finally finding the wooden surface and the heavy beam that barred it. As she lifted it, gritting her teeth, a deep vibration shook the room.

She groaned and let go of the beam, which fell to the floor. The sound dissipated, swallowed up by a violent rumbling far beyond the door behind her. The powerful tremor faded.

Shadi strained her ears for any other warning signs, unsure of what to do. Should she have taken cover? She might have been able to hide under the large table in the middle of the room if the earth had continued to shake.

All was quiet for a few moments. The voices outside the door became screams.

There was pain in the voices. And fear.

Shadi looked at the window, took a deep breath and opened it wide.