The First Castle, the castle of caves, holds the secret of the design of spiderlace. Its emblem is the bobbin.

The Second Castle, the castle of forests, holds the rights to exploit the cofferwood. Its emblem is the great tree.

The Third Castle, the castle of water, holds the ancient rights to shipbuilding and the sea. Its emblem is the ship.

The Fifth Castle, the castle of earth, holds the rights to the stargem mines in the west. Stargems are used as ornaments, commonly on the birthchains worn as charms by wealthy Ankoorians. The castle emblem is the stargem.

The Sixth Castle, the castle of plains, holds the rights to the grasslands and medicinal herbs. Its emblem is the bright garland.

The Seventh Castle, the castle of byways, holds the ancient rights to the magic of words and ways. Its emblem is the green and endless circle. The powerful Bright Ones of the Seventh Castle are benevolent, but those with lesser talent often turn to trickery or ill-will to extract their due. The Bright Ones are feared and respected. The others, Dark Ones, are simply feared. All can be recognised by their bright, multi-coloured robes, and many of them have odd-coloured eyes.

Bright Ones include Lady Jadetha.

Dark Ones include Lady Cazani.

The Eighth and Ninth Castles are undescribed, but there exists a Tenth Castle, the self-mocking name assumed by Ankoorian outcasts.

Lord Michael Loveday is a major player in the Fourth Castle. He and his wife Lady Jasmin of the Fifth Castle have a minstrel son, Crag, and a commerce-minded daughter Amaryllis. Amaryllis has a certain power of world-building, but this is not fully realised and may never be developed. Her story is told in "Amy Amaryllis." Other Ankoorians include Sophie and Gillie, maids at the castle, Jarman, Gillie's fiance, Master Ash the minstrel, Lord Random, a villainous lord, son of Lady Cazani.

 Ankoor is a country rather than a world. Named places included Western Port, the busy sea-port and market town to which Amaryllis travels, Cold Isle, where Amaryllis' Australian double Amy Day is imprisoned and The Gullet, a dangerous stretch of water in which Amy Day, almost drowns.

The land of Rargon, which is part of the same world as Ankoor, is mainly desert. It is inhabited by clans of people, racially different, but speaking different dialects of the same language.

Named places include Duneshadow, Cragcircle and Midpoint. The Rargonians honour musical talent, grace and physical fitness, and these attributes come together in the Valours, contested several times a year by acrobatic singer/dancers called "Valourns". There is a great deal of competition for places at the encampments, or training camps, and the masters of these camps are authoritarian and sometimes harsh.

Valourns in training must master all forms of the skill, and the most taxing of all these is the shadowdance, performed on a grassed-in arena or "Valoura". Valourns may be Singles, Duals or Triads, performing alone or in combinations of two or three. Music is played on pipes, made from the wood of the flutewood tree.

Famed encampments include Loakencamp, Pailencamp and Northerncamp, which are mastered by Master Loak, Master Pailen and Master North. Later, Shuencamp rises to the fore, mastered by Master ShuMar, a Triad Medallionist.

Major characters in Rargon include ShuMar and his fellow Valourns Pirry of Midpoint, Fraeman and Dawkinda, and ShuMar's cousin DaiShah. Others include a healingwoman known as "The Ankoorian", and Random, an Ankoorian groom, who appears also in Amy Amaryllis.

The land of McAnerin belongs to the same world as Ankoor and Rargon. It is, as Merrit Tormblood comments, "fairer than either and beholden to neither". McAnerin is separated from Ankoor by a mountain range and a pass and is across the sea from Rargon. It forms a tempting treasure for the dispossessed Tenth Castle of Ankoor.

Apart from the mountains in the north and another range (the Shrouded Mountains) in the south, much of the country consists of fertile plains and gently rising ground.

Because it is fertile and pleasant, McAnerin's people have had little need to develop elaborate lifestyles. It is a land of traders and villages, with some feudal-style castles here and there. Each castle is headed by a Lord or Mistra, who feels some responsibility for the people and villages under his or her jurisdiction.

Named places include the villages Clair, Scarlet, Musson and Fielding, the lake McDaniel Waters and castles called Torm, Hasselsjo, Zimmerhanzel and Curran.

On its surface, McAnerin is peaceful and pragmatic, but some people do believe in curses and fear "soulbinders", many of whom come from the Seventh Castle in Ankoor.