The Mark of Ran

The world is dying, seemingly forsaken by its Creator. Mankind schemes and plots and makes wars across it, forgetting that this turning sphere does not belong to him alone. Another race once dwelled here. Some believe that they were the last of the Angels, exiled here for a long-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 – unknown to him – in his veins runs the precious blood of this Elder race. Driven from his home by the ignorant and the envious, he finds refuge in the ancient, brooding tower of the malevolent Michael Psellos, where he is bequeathed a sword with a blood-thirst of its own and trained to be a killer of men, an assassin without pity. His tutor in murder is the beautiful, damaged and deadly Rowen, whom he loves without hope. Rejected, Rol turns his back on this teeming, wicked world and goes in search of the Hidden City where the desperate and the dispossessed fight for survival against those who would enslave them.

So here begin the chronicles of the great voyages of Rol Cortishane, and those of his compatriots: a band of outcasts who took to the wide oceans when every nation of the earth set its face against them. Ussa's Orphans, they were called, the Beggars of the Sea…

One of fantasy's most exciting storytellers, author of the acclaimed ‘Monarchies of God', Paul Kearney returns to the fray with this riproaring tale of the birth of a legend – an adventure bursting with magic, mayhem and brilliant invention.

"If there is a sub-genre of Naval Fantasy, Paul Kearney is its master and commander... He is to my mind one of the very best writers of fantasy around. And recognition of that is long overdue." – Steven Erikson