Now the Domains are governed with an iron fist by the Warlords, but there are wilder elements to the landscape which cannot be controlled and which may prove their undoing. Some are spirits of place, of water and air and fire and earth. Some are greater than these. And some are human.

Bramble: a village girl, whom no-one living can tame . . . forced to flee from her home for a crime she did not commit.

Ash: apprentice to a safeguarder, forced to kill for an employer he cannot escape.

Saker: an enchanter, who will not rest until the land is returned to his people.

As their three stories unfold, along with the stories of those whose lives they touch, it becomes clear that they are bound together in ways that not even a stonecaster could foresee -- bound by their past, their future, and their blood.