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. 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.