Free The Storyteller Trilogy by Sue Harrison Page A

her cheeks white with frost. She lay on her stomach with her head turned back, as though trying to look over her shoulder at whatever had caused her death.
    A curse, Chakliux thought, and closed his eyes in the sudden knowledge that the Near River People would blame him as they blamed him for the dogs. Even his brother, Sok, though Sok treated Chakliux with respect, could not hide his growing worry as dog after dog died.
    Chakliux knelt beside the woman, then saw the blood on her back, the wounds. This was no curse. Since when did curses use knives?
    So what should he do? Call the shaman? Tell Sok? Each village had it own ways. What did the Near River People do?
    Tell the husband, Chakliux thought. The men here had louder voices than in his own village. They expected to know things first and to make most decisions.
    Chakliux stood and, in doing so, heard a quiet moan. First he thought it was from Daes, perhaps from her spirit, but when he crouched down, he saw that her little son lay under her. He could not remember the boy’s name. The groan came again, and though Chakliux did not want to touch the dead woman for fear of cursing his hunting skills, he pushed her body aside and drew out the child.
    In dying the mother must have pulled him under her, Chakliux thought, and in that way kept him from freezing. But the boy was cold, his skin white, his eyelashes and brows frosted. The child cried out, and Chakliux saw the knife in the boy’s back, the handle dark with blood.
    No, not a curse, Chakliux thought. Something worse.
    The girl Yaa was the first in the lodge to hear Ghaden’s cry. The sound came from outside. Why was her brother out there? Yaa wondered, her thoughts still mixed with her dreams. She looked over at her mother, but Happy Mouth was asleep, and Brown Water, even if she was awake, would never bother herself over Ghaden. Ghaden’s mother, Daes, was not in her bed. She must be outside with him, Yaa thought, but she wrapped herself in one of her sleeping robes and got up.
    She bent to stir the hearth coals, then heard the cry again. It sounded as though Ghaden was hurt. She went to her mother, shook her awake. She opened her mouth to explain, but another call came—a man’s voice, asking for help.
    Happy Mouth nearly knocked her daughter over scrambling from her bed, and though she motioned for Yaa to stay back, Yaa followed her out the entrance tunnel.
    “Ghaden!” Yaa cried when she saw the boy in Chakliux’s arms. She grabbed her mother’s hand. “Mother, he is hurt,” she said, and pulled her toward Chakliux, but Yaa stopped when she saw Daes, white and frozen on the ground. Yaa had seen dead people before. She recognized the stiffness and pallor of death. Her stomach rose to her throat and she began retching, dry heaves that seemed to turn her belly inside out.
    “Get Brown Water,” her mother said to her, hissing the words. “Do not wake your father.”
    Yaa cupped her hands over her mouth and, sucking in through her fingers, filled her lungs with air until her belly stopped heaving, then she scooted inside. Both Brown Water and her father were awake.
    “Mother,” Yaa addressed Brown Water in politeness, “your sister-wife needs you.”
    Brown Water wrapped herself in a robe and said, “You were foolish. I told you to stay inside.”
    At first Yaa thought Brown Water was speaking to her, but then she realized the woman had tilted her head and was looking around the lodge as though she spoke to someone up by the smoke hole.
    “You think we did not know you were going to the trader?” Brown Water said.
    Yaa looked up toward the top of the lodge. Had Brown Water seen Daes’s spirit floating somewhere up there?
    “What has happened?” asked Yaa’s father, Summer Face, his voice raspy with age and sleep.
    Yaa went over to his bed, a place she was not supposed to be, but this was different. No one had to tell her that Daes was his favorite wife, and of all his children, even those grown and