Little by little our way slanted lower, which made me think we were going westward, with the slope of hill.

Here were no stores, but now and then the rubbish of the ancient earthquakes, broken pots shaped without the wheel, or old crude tools. And once, where the earth had settled, there was a man’s white skull sticking out of the ground from the eye-sockets upward, before one of the great pillars. He still wore shreds of an old hide helmet. He was the Watcher of the Threshold, the strong warrior they bury living under a sacred place, for his ghost to fight off demons from it. I started, and then saluted him as became his honor.

–The King Must Die, p. 263