Kavio

Kavio noted the changes to the Tors of Yellow Bear since his first visit eight years ago. It had seemed bigger then—he’d only been ten years old—but that was the distortion of a child’s awe. He remembered running down the crazy, curvy paths between the beehive shaped houses, first in play, again after the old man tried to kill him. He recalled the jingle of gold bangles on the ankles and wrists of Hertio’s daughter Lulla and the smell of the boiling nuggets from the smelting ovens.

Beyond the tors, across the river, the land sloped up into a forest of giant sequoias. The oaks and sycamores at their knees bowed before them like conquered warriors. His father’s army had camped on those slopes, keen to make peace but prepared to wage war. Finally, he made himself look at the Unfinished Tor, where he had killed another human being for the first time, and almost started that war.