As a child Kellaras had listened, eager as any boy wearing a wooden sword, to tales of great heroes, all of whom – he saw now – strode through a miasma of violence, stern-faced and righteous. The virtues set forth, step by step, were of the basest sort, and vengeance was the answer to everything. It slashed, it carved, it marched monstrously through a welter of blood. The hero killed for love lost, for love denied, for love misunderstood. The delivery of pain to others, in answer to a pain within – a soul wounded and lashing out – ran like a dark current through every tale.
