Lan spends her nights as a songgirl in Haak'gong, a city transformed by the Elantian colonizers. Her days are consumed by the search for knowledge about the strange mark - an untranslatable Hin character - burned into her arm by her mother in her last act before she died.Zen is a practitioner - one of the fabled magicians of the Last Kingdom. He's never seen anything like Lan's mark, but he knows that if there are answers, they lie deep in the pine forests and misty mountains of the Last Kingdom, with an order of practitioning masters planning to overthrow the Elantian regime.Yet, both Lan and Zen are hiding secrets - secrets that are buried deep within them. Secrets that even they have still to unearth. Both hold the power to liberate their land, if they don't destroy it first. Now the battle for the Last Kingdom begins.