The world is dying, forsaken by its Creator. Man schemes and plots and makes wars across it, forgetting that this turning earth does not belong to him alone. Another race once dwelled here. Some believe they were the last of the Angels, banished to this world for a forgotten crime; others that they were demons imprisoned here by a disgusted Creator. Rol Cortishane's quiet life is about to come to an end, for in him runs the blood of this Elder race. Driven from his home, he seeks refuge in the ancient citadel of Michal Psellos, where-he is trained to be a killer of men, an assassin without pity. His tutor in murder is the beautiful and deadly Rowen - one whom he loves without hope. THE MARK OF RAN is the beginning of Cortishane's story. A tale in which he journeys across the breadth of this teeming, wicked world and finds a legendary Hidden City where the desperate and the dispossessed fight for survival. This is the first of the chronicles of Rol's great voyages, and those of his compatriots; a band of outcasts who took to the wide oceans of the world when every nation of the earth set its face against them. Ussa's Orphans they were called, the Beggars of the Sea...