CHAPTER 3
The protector lay huddled around the remaining embers of his campfire. The final haunch of the donkey was skewered on a spit, uneaten and blackened by the flames. His eyes grew heavy, and he gave in to sleep. The fur blanket he had fashioned was unable to cover his frame, so that when sleep finally took him, he curled his legs upward like a child to be embraced by warmth.
The dream swallowed him whole, as if lying in wait.
He was on a cliffside, naked and climbing on a moonless night, unable to see above or below. Each jagged hold he found in the rock face was a miracle, keeping him alive for one more moment as he crept upward. Then he reached and found only the flat, resolute mountain face. He was sure the next hold was just beyond his reach. So he gambled his life, using his strength to mantel his body upwards. His palms and fingertips searched for safety, but he grasped only slick rock and fell deep into the void beyond.
Helpless, he closed his eyes and embraced the darkness, and in that instant he was plucked from the air by the claws of a winged beast of light, soaring up out of the infinite black. The beast turned its gaze toward him and commanded him.
"Awaken."
A pulse shuddered through his body. Something in his mind recoiled as if struck. Visions of another life rolled through his awareness, each captured in incandescent spheres. A child. A woman. A farm. Something worth protecting. Smoke on the horizon. Murderous eyes glimpsed through a broken door. A futile gesture. A contorted face. Something unforgivable. And through the final sphere, those same sinuous eyes, absent their reassuring radiance, looking straight at him.
But as light from the morning sun crept over his face, the memories receded, and the protector awoke. He blinked into the bright sky and rolled over onto his side. The dream had left his body drenched and his mind muddled, full of a backwash of emotions he could not explain. He reached for his jug of water, but found it empty, turned on its side in the night.
He looked for other signs of disturbance in his camp, but found none. So he followed the sound of the river and stepped into the cool water, letting his jug fill as he surveyed the horizon. The stream tumbled down an expanse of rock near a cliff on the mountain. From this vantage point, he could see chimney smoke commingling with their neighbors' in the air as villagers prepared themselves for one more day.
A foreign sound roused his senses—a small splash behind him. On the other side of the bank, slightly further up, he saw the priest gathering his own water in a wooden pail. The frail old man held up a hand in greeting and smiled in his familiar way. The silent acknowledgement hung in the air until the protector nodded and watched the priest turn back to the mountain path that led to the temple.