The Castings Trilogy

Book 0: The Castings Trilogy

by Pamela Freeman

Genres: Action & Adventure; Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

A thousand years ago, the Eleven Domains were invaded and the original inhabitants were driven onto the road as Travelers, belonging nowhere, welcomed by no one. Now the Domains are governed with an iron fist by the Warlords, but there are wilder elements in the landscape that cannot be controlled and that may prove the Warlords' 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 her home for a crime she did not commit. Ash: A safeguarder's apprentice who must 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 have foreseen -- by their past, their future, and their blood. This omnibus edition includes all three novels -- Blood Ties, Deep Water, and Full Circle -- together for the first time.

Release date: December 2, 2010

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 1281

Sample

THE DESIRE TO KNOW the future gnaws at our bones. That is where it started, and might have ended, years ago.



I had cast the stones, seeing their faces flick over and fall: Death, Love, Murder, Treachery, Hope. We are a treacherous
people—half of our stones show betrayal and violence and death from those close, death from those far away. It is not so with
other peoples. I have seen other sets of stones that show only natural disasters: death from sickness, from age, the pain
of a broken heart, loss in childbirth. And those stones are more than half full with pleasure and joy and plain, solid warnings
like “You reap what you sow” and “Victory is not the same as satisfaction.”


Of course, we live in a land taken by force, by battle and murder and invasion. It is not so surprising, perhaps, that our
stones reflect our history.


So. I cast the stones again, wondering. How much of our future do we call to ourselves through this scrying? How much of it
do we make happen because the stones give us a pattern to fulfill?


I have seen the stones cast too many times to doubt them. When I see Murder in the stones, I know someone will die. But would
they have died without my foretelling? Perhaps merely saying the word, even in a whisper, brings the thought to the surface
of a mind, allows the mind to shape it, give it substance, when otherwise it might have remained nothing more than vague murmurings,
easily ignored.


Death recurred again and again in my castings that night. I did not ask whose. Perhaps it was mine, perhaps not. I had no
one left to lose, and therefore did not fear to lose myself.


There was someone at the door, breathing heavily outside, afraid to come in. But he did, as they always do, driven by love
or fear or greed or pain, or simple curiosity, a desire to giggle with friends.


This one came in shyly: young, eighteen or nineteen, brown hair, green trousers and blue boots. He squatted across the cloth
from me with the ease of near-childhood. I held out my left hand, searching his face. He had hazel eyes, but the shape of
his face showed he had old blood, from the people who lived in this land before the landtaken, the invasion. There was old
pain, too, old anger stoked up high.


He knew what to do. He spat in his own palm, a palm crisscrossed by scars, as though it had been cut many times, and clapped
it to mine. I held him tightly and reached for the pouch with my right hand. He was strong enough to stay silent as I dug
in the pouch for five stones and threw them across the cloth between us. He was even strong enough not to follow their fall
with his eyes, to hold my gaze until I nodded at him and looked down.


He saw it in my face.

“Bad?”

I nodded. One by one I touched the stones lying faceup. “Death. Bereavement. Chaos. This is the surface. This is what all
will see.” Delicately I turned the other two stones over. “Revenge and Rejoicing. This is what is hidden.” An odd mixture,
one I had never before seen.


He brooded over them, not asking anything more. The stones did not speak to me as they often do; all I could tell him were
their names. It seemed to be enough for him.


“You know what this refers to?” I asked.

He nodded, absently, staring at Rejoicing. He let go of my hand and slid smoothly to his feet, then tugged some coins out
of a pocket and let them fall on the rug.


“My thanks, stonecaster.” Then he was gone.

Who was I to set Death on the march? I know my stones by their feel, even in the darkness of the pouch. I could have fumbled
and selected him a happy dream: Love Requited, Troubles Over, Patience. I could have soothed the anger in his eyes, the pain
in his heart.


But who am I to cheat the stones?

After he left, I cast them again. This time, Death did not appear. She had gone out the door with the young one and his scars.

SAKER REMEMBERED the first time he had tried to raise the dead. It was the night after Freite, the enchanter, had finally died. By then he
had been her apprentice for thirteen long years, but only in the last two had she shared any real secrets with him, and only
then because he had threatened to leave her if she withheld.



Freite had wept for her great age and his refusal to any longer give his power for her extended life. She had no more to offer
him. He had learned everything she had to teach of her Wind City magic, and it had not included pity, or generosity. So he
refused to touch her in her extremity, knowing she would drain the power out of him to give herself another day, another week,
a month if she was lucky… She had died cursing him, but he was cursed already, so he disregarded it.


After she was buried, the Voice of Whitehaven had pronounced Freite’s bequests and he had found that her house had passed
into his hands, along with her savings, which were much greater than he had imagined. So there he was, rich but without a
plan. He had gone to the stonecaster to find out what the gods wanted him to do next. And the stonecaster had sent him out
the door with Revenge and Rejoicing awaiting him.


That first time, he hadn’t even known he needed the actual bones for the spell to work. The enchanter had told him half-truths,
half-spells, trying to hoard her knowledge as though it could ward off death. Saker knew, certain sure, nothing kept Death
away for good. That Lady tapped everyone on the shoulder, sooner or later. But sometimes, just sometimes, she could be tricked.


He raised the black stone knife level with his palm, forcing his hand not to shake. This must work. Now, finally, he had the means, seven years since the stonecaster had set him on his path…



“I am Saker, son of Alder and Linnet of the village of Cliffhaven. I seek justice.”

He began to shake with memory, with yearning, sorrow, righteous rage. There lay the strength of his spell. He touched the
never-closing wound in his mind, drew on the pain and set it to work. The rest of the spell wasn’t in words, but in memories,
complex and distressing: colors, phrases of music, a particular scent, the sound of a scream…


When he had gathered them all he looked down at his father’s bones on the table, his father’s skull staring emptily. He pressed
the knife to his palm then drew it down hard. The blood surged out in time with his heart and splashed in gouts on the chalk-white
bones.


“Alder,” he said. “Arise.”

THE BLOOD TRAIL was plain. Every few steps a splotch showed brilliantly red. There were tracks, too. In summer it would have been harder,
but in this earliest part of spring the grasses and ferns were thin on the ground, and the ground was soft enough to show
the wolf’s spoor.



Even the warlord’s man would have been able to track this much blood; for Bramble it was like following a clearly marked highway,
through new fern fronds and old leaf mold, down past the granite rocks, through the stand of mountain ash, blood marking the
trail at every step, so fresh she could smell it. The prints on the right were lighter; it was favoring the wounded side.


It wasn’t sensible to go after a hurt wolf with just a boot knife in her hand. She’d be lucky to get home without serious
injury. She’d be lucky to get home at all. But she couldn’t leave a wounded animal to die in pain, even if she hadn’t shot
it.


The brown wolf had limped across the far end of the clearing where she had been collecting early spring sorrel at the edge
of a small stream, too intent on its own pain to even notice Bramble.


The forest had seemed to hush the moment she saw the arrow, the wolf, the blood dripping from its side. The glade glowed in
the afternoon sunlight. Rich and heady, the smell of awakening earth, that special smell that came after the snowmelt was
over, rose in drifts around her. She heard chats quarreling far overhead. The trickle of the stream. A squirrel leaping from
branch to branch of an elm, rattling the still-bare twigs. It paused. The wolf stopped and looked back over his shoulder,
seeing her for the first time. She waited, barely breathing, feeling as if the whole forest waited with her.


“There he is! See him? Don’t lose him!”

“Quiet, idiot!”

The voices broke the moment. The wolf slipped into the shadow of some pine trees. The squirrel, scolding, skipped from elm
to willow to alder and was gone. Bramble looked around quickly. The warlord’s men were close. Nowhere to hide except up a
tree. She dropped the sorrel and sprang for the lowest branch of a yew. Its dark branches would hide her, unlike the easier-to-climb
willow next to it whose branches were still showing catkins, but no leaves.


She climbed fast, without worrying about scratches, so she was bleeding in a dozen places by the time she had reached a safe
perch. She grabbed some of the yew leaves and crushed them in her hands, wringing them to release the bitter-smelling sap,
then rubbed it on the trunk as far down as she could reach, to confuse the scent in case they had hounds, who would sniff
out the blood for sure and certain.


She wondered who they were chasing. An actual criminal? Or just someone who’d looked at them the wrong way? Someone old Ceouf,
the warlord, had taken against, maybe, or someone who had complained? Bramble smiled wryly. At least it wasn’t a woman. Everyone
knew what happened to a woman found alone by the warlord’s men.


It angered her, as it always did. More than that, it enraged her. The warlords claimed that they protected the people in their
Domain, from other warlords, of course, and in earlier days from invaders. Perhaps they had, once. But a couple of generations
ago the warlords of the Eleven Domains had made peace, and there hadn’t been more than a border skirmish since. The warlord’s
men weren’t soldiers anymore, just thugs and bullies. You stayed out of their way, didn’t draw their attention, and spat in
the dust of their footprints after they’d gone.


It’s not meant to be like this, she thought. No one should have to hide in fear of the people who are supposed to protect them.


Today she had been happy, happier than she had been for months, since her sister had married and moved away to Carlion, the
nearest free town. She had been out in her forest again, rejoicing in the returning spring, giving thanks for new life. And
they had brought death and fear with them, as they did everywhere. Her chest burned with resentment. Some part of her had
always refused to be sensible about it, as her parents demanded. “The world’s not going to change just because you don’t like
it,” they’d said, time after time. She knew they were right. Of course she knew it, she wasn’t a child or a fool. And yet,
some part of her insisted, It’s not meant to be like this.


“This way!”

The voice came again. Bramble parted the needles in front of her until she could see the clearing below. There were two men,
one blond, one red-haired, in warlord’s gear, with a blue crest on their shoulders to show their allegiance to this, the South
Domain. They were young, about her age. Their horses were tethered near the trail that led into the clearing. One was a thin
dark bay, the other a well-muscled roan. The trail ended there, she knew, and the forest, even in early spring, was too dense
from here in for mounted men to ride.


“I know I got it,” the blond said. “I winged it, at least.”

“If you want to finish it off, you’ll have to go on foot,” the redhead said. They looked at the undergrowth consideringly,
and then the blond looked down at his shiny riding boots.


“I just bought these,” he complained. He had a sharp voice, as though it were the other man’s fault that his boots were new.

“Leave it,” the redhead said, clearly bored now.

“I wanted the skin. I’ve always wanted a wolf skin.” The blond frowned, then shrugged. “Another day.”

They turned and went back to their horses, mounted, and rode away without a backward glance.

Bramble sat appalled and even angrier. He had left a wounded animal to die in agony so he wouldn’t get scratches on his boots!
Oh, isn’t that typical! she thought. They’re the animals, the greedy, heedless, bloody shagging bastards!


She waited until she was sure they weren’t coming back, then swung down from the tree, pulled her knife from her boot, and
went to look for the wolf.


She followed the blood trail until it disappeared into the big holly thicket. She skirted the sharp leaves and picked up the
trail on the other side. It finally came to an end near the stream in the center of the forest.


The wolf had staggered down to drink and stood, legs shaking, near the water’s edge. Then it saw Bramble, and froze with fear.
But it was foaming at the mouth, desperate for water, and she stayed very still, as still as a wild creature in the presence
of humans, until it took the last few steps to the water and drank. The black-fletched arrow, a warlord’s man’s arrow, stuck
out from its side.


After drinking, it collapsed on the muddy edge of the stream and panted in pain, looking up at her with great brown eyes,
pleading wordlessly.


Bramble came to it gently, making no sudden move that might startle it. “There now, there now, everything’s all right now…”
she crooned, as she did to the orphan kids she raised, or the nannies she helped give birth. She lowered her hand slowly,
softly onto its forehead and the wolf whined like a pup. “Not long now, not long,” she said softly, stroking back to grip
its ears. She gazed into its eyes steadily until it looked away, as all wild animals will look away from the gaze of anything
they do not wish to fight, and then she cut its throat, as quickly and painlessly as she could.


Bramble sat waiting, her hand still on its head, ignoring the tears on her cheeks, while the blood pulsed out into the stream,
swirling red. There wasn’t much blood. It had bled a lot already. Her fingers gentled its ears as though it could still feel,
then she stood up.


She hesitated, looking at the caked blood on its side, then stripped off her jacket, shirt, skirt and leggings, so she wouldn’t
stain them. She had to hope that the warlord’s men wouldn’t change their minds and come back. She could just imagine that scene.



Her knife was only sharp enough to slit through the hide. She had to heave the carcass over to peel the skin off and it was
much heavier than she thought. There was blood all over her. She wrinkled her nose, but kept going. It was a good, winter-thick
pelt and besides, taking it gave the death of the wolf some purpose, instead of it being a complete waste of life. She cut
the pelt off at the base of the skull. It was worth more with head attached, but Bramble had always felt that tanning the
head of the animal was a kind of insult.


She would have left the carcass for the crows and the foxes, but she didn’t want the warlord’s men to find it, if they came
looking for the hide later. Let him think that he had missed. She dragged it up the hill to a rock outcropping, and piled
stones on it. At least it would make a meal for the ants and the worms.


She washed the blood off both her and the hide, put her clothes back on, tied up the hide and hoisted it over her shoulder.
It weighed her down heavily, but she could manage it easily enough. She set off home.


The way was through the black elm and pine forest, and normally she would have lingered to admire the spring-green leaves
that were beginning to bud, and listen to the white-backed woodpeckers frantically drilling for food after their long migration.
She had been observing a red-breasted flycatcher pair build their nest, but today she passed it by without noticing, although
she stopped to collect some wild thyme and sallet greens, and to empty one of her snares. She found a rabbit, thin after winter
but good enough for a stew, and the pelt still winter-lush. Her hands did the work of resetting the snare but her mind was
elsewhere.


The forest was ostensibly the warlord’s domain, but was traditionally the hunting or grazing ground for a range of people,
from foragers like Bramble to charcoal burners, coppicers, chair makers, withiers, pig farmers and woodcutters. It was a rare
day that Bramble didn’t meet someone in the forest; depending on the season, sometimes she saw as many people there as in
the village street. It was just her bad luck that today she had seen the warlord’s men.


She came out of the forest near the crossroads just outside Wooding and realized that it hadn’t been just bad luck. There
had been an execution today.


Her village of Wooding saw a lot of executions, because it was on the direct road from Carlion to the warlord’s fort at Thornhill.
For centuries the South Domain warlords had used the crossroads just outside Wooding as the site for their punishments. There
was a scaffold set up for when the warlord felt merciful. And for when he wasn’t there was the rock press, a sturdy wooden
box the size of a coffin, but deeper, where the condemned were piled with heavy stones until their bones broke and they suffocated,
slowly.


Today they had used the rock press. There was blood seeping out of the box at the corners. The condemned often bled from the
nose and mouth in the final stages of pressing. Bramble slowed as she walked past the punishment site. Did she want to know
who they had killed this time? What was the point?


She went over to the box and looked in. No one she knew, thank the gods. Some stranger—the Domain was large, and criminals
were brought to the warlord from miles away. Then she looked closer. A stranger, but just a boy. Fourteen, perhaps. A baby.
Probably accused of something like “disrespect to the warlord.” Her heart burned again, as it had in the woods. Anger, indignation,
pity. She would have to make sure she was nowhere near the village the next morning, when the warlord’s men rounded up the
villagers to see the boy’s corpse removed from the box and placed in the gibbet. She doubted she could applaud and cheer for
the warlord over this execution, as the villagers were expected to do.


Some did so gladly. There were always a few who enjoyed a killing, like the crows that nested in the tree next to the scaffold
and descended on the corpses with real enthusiasm. But the rest of the villagers had seen too many people die who looked just
like them. Ordinary people. People who couldn’t pay their taxes, or hadn’t bowed low enough to the warlord. Or who had objected
to their daughter being dragged away to the fort by the warlord’s men. It was important to attend the executions, and to cheer
loudly. The warlord’s men were always watching. Bramble had cheered as loudly as anyone, in the past, and had been sick later,
every time.


So the warlord’s men would have done their job today and gone home as soon as the boy stopped breathing. The blond had probably
taken the shortcut through the woods and had seen the wolf by accident. He couldn’t resist tracking it a little way. Couldn’t
resist killing again.


A hunter who didn’t care if the animal he shot suffered deserved nothing but contempt. He certainly didn’t deserve the hide
of the animal he had abandoned to pain and slow death.


But the sensible thing to do would be to take the skin to the warlord’s fort, say it had one of the warlord’s arrows in it when she found
it, and let the blond claim it. Let him have his prize for killing.



Bramble looked at the boy in the box, whose face was still contorted in pain. “Well, no one ever said I was sensible,” she
said.


She skirted the village and came to the back of her parents’ house, through the alders that fringed the stream. She dumped
the wolf skin behind the privy, then went the whole way back so she would be seen to come home through the main street with
nothing in her hands but rabbit and greens.


Bramble passed the inn and ignored the stares of the old men who sat on the bench outside the door, tankards in hand, until
one of them called out, “Got your nose stuck in the air, I see! Too high and mighty to tell us how that sister of yours is
doing off in Carlion!”


It was Swith, the leatherworker’s father, both hands cramped around his mug. He was a terrible gossip, but that wasn’t why
he had called Bramble over. He wanted her to notice his hands. The arthritis that kept him sitting here in the mild sun had
swelled his knuckles up like a goat’s full udder.


“She’s well, she says,” Bramble replied. “They’re building a new house, on the lot next to his parents’.”

“Ah, she’s done well for herself, that Maryrose!” cackled Swith’s crony, old Aden, the most lecherous man in the village in
his day, and still not to be trusted within arm’s reach. “She wasn’t an eye-catcher like you, lass. But he got a good hot
bed to go to, I’ll say that, her town clerk’s son!”


The other men frowned. Maryrose had been liked by everyone in the village, and she was certainly no light-skirt.

“That’s enough of that, Aden,” Swith said reprovingly. “Your mam and da will be missing her,” he said with a cunning sideways
look. “She was their favorite, wasn’t she?”


It was an old match of his, trying to get Bramble to give him back a short answer. It kept him amused, and it didn’t do her
any harm. Everyone knew that Maryrose was the favorite.


“They are missing her, of course, Swith,” Bramble said. Then, feeling she had given Aden and the others enough entertainment,
she said, “I notice your hands are bothering you. Could I be helping? Give them a rub, maybe?”


“If you want to help a man by rubbing something—”

“Close that dirty mouth, Aden!” Swith bellowed then glanced a bit shamefacedly at Bramble. “Well, lass, now you mention it…”

She smiled at him. “I’ll come by after supper.”

It was a more or less regular thing she did, massaging goose grease and comfrey into the old people’s hands and feet. Not
all of them, of course. Just the cross-grained ones who couldn’t find anyone else to help them. She was glad Aden didn’t have
arthritis; she wasn’t about to get within groping distance of him.


She hefted the rabbit and greens in one hand. “I have to get these to Mam.” None of them had mentioned the rabbit, though
they had eyed it and no doubt would have liked to hear all the details on where she had trapped it and what kind of snare
she had used, the kind of talk that kept them occupied for hours. To ask would have been against custom, since they all knew
Swith had called her over to ask her a favor, which she was granting. If she wanted to tell them about her hunting, she would,
in her own good time.


If she hadn’t offered to help Swith, it would have been a different story, she thought with amusement as she walked up the
street, exchanging greetings with Mill the charcoal burner, home at his grandparents’ until after the snowmelt and spring
rains, and ignoring the tribe of dogs that swirled around her heels as they always did. But she had made the offer, so the
old men couldn’t cross-question her without being unforgivably rude.


“I have a doe ready to drop twins, Bramble,” called Sigi, the new young brewster who had doubled the inn’s clientele after
she had married its owner, Eril. Sigi’s three toddlers, who ran around her feet as she brought in her washing, were screaming
with excitement about a maggot one of them had plucked from the rubbish pile. “If she doesn’t have enough milk for both, can
I bring one to you?”


“Of course, and welcome,” Bramble called back. “I’ve no orphans this season so far.”

When Sigi had first met Bramble, she had reacted as many people did, with suspicion at Bramble’s dark hair and eyes. In this
land of blonds and redheads, a dark-haired person was assumed to be a Traveler, a descendant of the original inhabitants of
the Domains, who had been invaded and dispossessed a thousand years ago. Old history. But no one trusted Travelers. They were
thieves, liars, perverts, bad luck bringers. Bramble had heard all the insults over the years, mostly (though not always)
by people who didn’t know her, like ordinary travelers on the road through Wooding to Carlion.


Sigi had finally overcome her suspicion, and Bramble was trying hard to forget the insult. It would be nice to have a friend
in the village, now Maryrose was gone, and Sigi was the best candidate. The other girls had long ago shut her out after she
had made it clear that she didn’t have any interest in the things that obsessed them, like boys and hair ribbons and sewing
for their glory boxes. Not that boys weren’t a pleasure, now and then.


Sigi’s oldest child grabbed the maggot and dropped it down her brother’s back and the resultant wailing distracted Sigi completely.
Bramble laughed and went on to her own home, following Gred, the goose girl, as she shepherded her waddling, squabbling, hissing
flock back to their night pasture outside the mill.


Bramble’s family lived in an old cottage, a house really, bigger than it looked from the street, as it ran far back toward
the stream. It was built of the local bluestone, all except for the chimney, which was rounded river stones in every shade
of gray and brown and dark blue. It was thatched with the herringbone pattern you found on every roof around here, although
in Carlion they thatched a fish-scale pattern, when they didn’t tile in slate. The front garden caught the morning light,
so it was full of early herbs just pushing through the soil. The vine over one corner was still a bare skeleton, but the house
had a cheerful, open look with its shutters wide and its door ajar.


The door was ajar because her mother was in the road sweeping up the droppings the geese had left behind. The Widow Farli
was doing the same thing outside her cottage a little farther down. Goose droppings were good fertilizer, and for someone
like Widow Farli, who only kept a couple of scraggly hens, they were important. Bramble’s mother, Summer, kept pigs, as well
as goats and hens, and really didn’t need them.


“No use wasting them,” her mam said as Bramble came up. She swept the droppings onto an old piece of bag. “Here, go and give
them to Widow Farli.” She held the bag out.


Bramble took the droppings and handed the wild thyme and the sallet greens and the rabbit carcass to her mother.

Farli had a face you could cut cheese with, and the tip of her nose was always white, as if with anger, but at what, Bramble
had never figured out. She stared past Bramble and said snidely, “Nice of your mother to take the trouble. She’s not one to go off gallivanting and leave all her work to others.”



“Just as well,” Bramble said, smiling sweetly, “or what would become of you?”

Farli’s face flushed dark red. “Your tongue’ll get you into mischief one day, young lady, you mark my words! Mischief or worse!”

She turned on her heel and flounced toward her back garden, keeping a tight hold of the bag of droppings.

Bramble grinned and went home. She had a pelt to cure