A Torch Against the Night

A Torch Against the Night (2016) is a young adult fantasy novel by Sabaa Tahir. It is the second installment in the bestselling Ember Quartet, which is set in a brutal world inspired by ancient Rome. Following the commercial and critical success of the first book in the series, An Ember in the Ashes (2015), A Torch Against the Night became a #1 New York Times bestseller. The novel continues the story of fugitives Laia, a Scholar, and Elias, a former elite soldier, as they travel across the Empire to rescue Laia’s brother from a deadly prison while being hunted by their enemies. The book explores themes including The Competing Demands of Personal Freedom and Collective Duty, The Corrupting Nature of Violence, and The Frailty of Loyalty in a World of Impossible Choices.

This guide refers to the 2016 Razorbill eBook edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of racism, graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, illness, and death.

Plot Summary

The world of A Torch Against the Night is inhabited by a number of distinct cultures, including Martials, Scholars, Tribals, and Mariners. The Martial Empire currently rules most of the land, although the Tribals and Mariners have established uneasy truces with it. The Scholars have been conquered by the Martials and either live in poverty within designated areas or are enslaved by the Empire. The world also includes some supernatural beings and elements, most notably the Augurs, a group who portend the future and are tasked with choosing a new Emperor when necessary.

Scholar girl Laia and Mask (elite Martial soldier) Elias Veturius flee Blackcliff Academy through the catacombs beneath the city of Serra, followed by other Masks. Laia has freed Elias from his execution in exchange for his help rescuing her brother, Darin, from the notorious Kauf Prison. In the process, she and her allies, including Blackcliff’s Cook and fellow enslaved Scholar Izzi, have destroyed Blackcliff.

Pursued by Empire soldiers, including Masks and lower-ranked soldiers called legionnaires and auxes, they encounter a supernatural creature called an efrit, which Elias kills after it tries to take Laia’s silver armlet. They emerge into Serra during a violent Scholar Resistance revolt and are spotted by Elias’s mother, the Commandant of Blackcliff, Keris Veturius. Elias remembers an abandoned building owned by his family that his grandfather showed him, through which they can escape. He is sure that his grandfather, Quin Veturius, wouldn’t have told the Commandant about it.

However, when they get there, they find the Commandant waiting for him.  During the fight, the Commandant cuts Elias with a throwing star. With Laia’s help, Elias knocks his mother unconscious, and they flee the city, realizing she intentionally let them go but unable to understand why. Laia believes they should’ve killed the Commandant, but Elias couldn’t do it.

Meanwhile, Helene Aquilla, Elias’s best friend and fellow Mask, is imprisoned for failing to execute him as ordered by the new Emperor, Marcus Farrar. She is brutally interrogated for five days by a Black Guard lieutenant, Avitas Harper, but reveals nothing. Her father, Pater Aquillus, secures her release by offering the political support of their powerful family, Gens Aquilla, to Marcus.

As Elias and Laia travel through the desert, Elias begins suffering from seizures, and they realize that the throwing star that the Commandant injured him with was poisoned. After fighting off a wraith, another type of fey creature that was seeking silver, Laia learns from Elias that Darin’s ability to forge Serric steel, previously known only to the Martials, makes him a high-value prisoner because his knowledge could support a revolution.

Laia takes Elias, whose seizures are coming more frequently, to the lawless outpost of Raider’s Roost to find Tellis extract, a medicine to treat the seizures. There, she sees posters and realizes that there are bounties on her and Elias. When she is chased, Laia hides and escapes direct scrutiny by a Tribal bounty hunter named Shikaat. She realizes that when she is extremely frightened, she has the power to become invisible. However, she quickly loses the power, and Shikaat captures her and demands that she lead him to Elias. She complies but secretly administers the Tellis extract to Elias, who recovers enough to fight. Laia kills Shikaat in self-defense, and they escape into a treacherous rock field called the Juts.

During his seizures, Elias is transported to a spiritual realm called the Waiting Place, where he meets the Soul Catcher, a jinn who helps the dead to move on from the living. She tells him he is already dying, which leads Elias to deduce that the Commandant used Nightweed poison, a fatal substance that will kill him within months.

Helene, now appointed as the Emperor’s new Blood Shrike, his second-in-command and highest military leader, is ordered by Marcus to hunt down and execute Elias. She receives a cryptic clue from Cook, the woman formerly enslaved by the Commandant, who is supposedly dead. She also has a disturbing encounter with a powerful hooded figure called the Nightbringer.

In the foothills of the Serran Mountains, Laia and Elias are found by Keenan, a Scholar rebel, and Izzi, who escaped from Blackcliff. Keenan, who has romantic feelings for Laia, clashes with Elias, but Laia insists they all travel together to the Tribal city of Nur. There, Elias plans to use a favor owed to him by Afya Ara-Nur, the Zaldara (chieftain) of Tribe Nur, to get them safely north to Kaur and rescue Darin. Helene and her lieutenants track them, deducing they are heading to Nur for the Tribal Fall Gathering.

While approaching Nur, the group is caught in a sandstorm, and the rope connecting Laia and Keenan to the others is mysteriously cut. Elias finds them, and they take shelter in the city. Disguised as an enslaver and his enslaved people, they locate Afya, who agrees to help but involves Elias’s adoptive Tribal mother, Mamie Rila. During the gathering’s farewell tale, Mamie incites a massive riot by telling the story of Elias’s suffering, creating a diversion that allows hundreds of Tribal caravans to flee the city.

In the chaos, Elias is spotted by Helene. He draws her away, saving her when a mob overwhelms her. After a tense confrontation, he escapes but is forced to watch as Helene’s soldiers capture members of his tribe, including Mamie Rila. He reunites with the group, who hide in Afya’s caravan and escape the city unnoticed.

Believing he can move faster alone, Elias leaves for Kauf, passing through the Forest of Dusk, where the Soul Catcher confirms he has only weeks to live. Weeks later, Laia’s group, still traveling with Afya’s tribe, is attacked by Martial soldiers, and Izzi is killed protecting Afya’s brother, Gibran. Laia convinces Afya to let her and Keenan continue to Kauf alone.

Elias successfully breaks into Kauf but is captured by the sadistic Warden, who experiments on prisoners. He is imprisoned in the interrogation block, where he discovers Darin is alive in a nearby cell, being tortured for information about Laia. Helene tracks Elias to a cave near Kauf and confirms with the Warden that he is a prisoner.

When Laia and Keenan arrive at the same cave, the Nightbringer reveals he has been masquerading as Keenan. He is a jinn king seeking to reassemble an ancient Scholar weapon, the Star, to free his people. Laia’s silver armlet, given to her by her mother, is a piece of the Star, which he can only take if given in love and trust. Having earned her trust, he takes the armlet and disappears.

Helene, who has realized that the Commandant is planning a coup, goes to Antium to report it to the Emperor. The Commandant arrives and refutes the claim. As punishment for Helene’s failure to capture Elias, Marcus executes her parents and older sister. He spares her younger sister, Livia, but forces her to marry him as leverage against Helene.

Laia, now alone, masters her power of invisibility and is found by Afya, who followed her out of a sense of honor. They devise a plan to break into Kauf.

On the morning of the Rathana festival, Laia starts fires in Kauf as a diversion. Elias and an enslaved child, Tas, free Darin, but they are trapped in a burning stairwell, and Elias dies from smoke inhalation. In the Waiting Place, Elias makes a deal with Shaeva to become the next Soul Catcher in exchange for being brought back to life, free of the poison.

He returns to his body and escapes the fire with Darin and Tas. He and Laia reunite in the prison yard, where the Warden captures Laia. Tas and the other enslaved children attack the Warden, and Tas kills him. Amidst a mass prisoner revolt, Elias, Laia, and an unconscious Darin escape in a canoe with Afya.

A month later, Helene, now Mater of her Gens, plots to destroy the Commandant with the help of Avitas Harper, who is revealed to be Elias’s half-brother, and Cook, whose role in the Scholar rebellion is undefined but important. In a cabin in the Free Lands of Marinn, Elias explains his new role as Soul Catcher to Laia. He is now bound to the Forest of Dusk but can leave for short periods. As they care for Darin, who has been unconscious since the escape, he finally awakens.