Storyteller Series by Sue Harrison

Eighty centuries before our time, in the frozen, snowbound interior of a place that will someday be called Alaska, a beautiful young woman called K'os, of the Cousin River Village, is brutally attacked and ravaged by men from the Near River Village. With ruthless passion she vows vengeance on those who have wronged her. The next day, in the same place, K'os finds an abandoned baby - a child with a club foot who's been left to die. She adopts the babe as her own and names him Chakliux... moreEighty centuries before our time, in the frozen, snowbound interior of a place that will someday be called Alaska, a beautiful young woman called K'os, of the Cousin River Village, is brutally attacked and ravaged by men from the Near River Village. With ruthless passion she vows vengeance on those who have wronged her. The next day, in the same place, K'os finds an abandoned baby - a child with a club foot who's been left to die. She adopts the babe as her own and names him Chakliux. Twenty years later, K'os has grown cold and cunning, obsessed with the desire for revenge and eager to create conflict. Chakliux, respected as his tribe's treasured storyteller, is sent back to the village of his birth, where he has been chosen to wed the shaman's daughter in order to bring peace to the Cousin and Near River People. But before he can win the people's trust, a double murder jeopardizes his mission and forces him to travel to distant lands. Ultimately Chakliux must grow and learn - driven by the ancient songs of sea and sky, earth and animals - as he seeks the truth about the offenses for which his people have suffered and about the woman who raised him, the hateful and ambitious K'os, who may be his most dangerous enemy of all. less

Winter looms in this place of icy splendor near the top of the world-chilling a heart already frozen by hatred and cold dreams of revenge? Experience and adversity have made the storyteller Chakliux a wise and powerful hunter and a man of great respect. But a tender heart is his weakness. In his village lives the beautiful Aqamdax for whom he yearns, though she is mated to a cruel and dangerous tribesman she does not love... moreWinter looms in this place of icy splendor near the top of the world-chilling a heart already frozen by hatred and cold dreams of revenge? Experience and adversity have made the storyteller Chakliux a wise and powerful hunter and a man of great respect. But a tender heart is his weakness. In his village lives the beautiful Aqamdax for whom he yearns, though she is mated to a cruel and dangerous tribesman she does not love. It is Chakliux she runs to under a clear, moonlit sky while the village sleeps. But there can be no future for them together until a curse upon their people has been transcended. And then there is K'os, the healing woman--maddened and embittered by the outrage she was forced to endure years earlier--outcast and enslaved by the leader of the enemy tribe against whom she has sworn vengeance. To enact her savage and terrible justice, she will use--and destroy--anyone, if necessary, including the boy-turned-man she rescued in infancy and raised as her son: Chakliux, the storyteller. Return now to a frozen land in a remarkable time eighty centuries past, when the spirit was tested--and strengthened--by the cruelties of nature and the great mysteries of life. less

On that day of great terror and sadness, the girl called Daughter escaped with her grandfather across the icy North Pacific to find shelter on the islands of the Whale Hunters. But peace was not to be their lot. For here the mad medicine woman K'os was scheming vengeance against her most despised enemy, the revered warrior and statesman called Chakliux -- her son... moreOn that day of great terror and sadness, the girl called Daughter escaped with her grandfather across the icy North Pacific to find shelter on the islands of the Whale Hunters. But peace was not to be their lot. For here the mad medicine woman K'os was scheming vengeance against her most despised enemy, the revered warrior and statesman called Chakliux -- her son. And this young, innocent female from a far-off place was the key -- the final, essential ingredient in a demonic brew of suspicion, hostility, and forbidden love that K'os would prepare with an expert hand ... to poison the lives of those she hated and would see dead. less