On the verge of passing out from the encroaching heat, Hunkapa Aub had fallen to his knees. Panting like a runaway bellows, the black litah sat back on his haunches, waiting for the end.
Then a hand appeared out of nowhere, beckoning. It was followed by a familiar face. “Hurry! There is little time.”
“We don’t need you to tell us that, bruther!” Without stopping to realize that Ehomba was beckoning to him from within a circle of nothingness, Simna stumbled toward the gesturing hand.
It grabbed hold of his own and pulled. Almost immediately, the unbearable heat disappeared. The swordsman found himself standing in a corridor of coolness. Mere feet away now, the fire continued to rage. But he could no longer feel it.
Mouth slightly agape in wonder, he extended tentative fingers toward the blaze. They halted inches from the nearest tongue of flame. Pushing experimentally, he found that there was a slight give to the invisible surface that kept him separated from instant incineration, as if he were pressing against transparent rubber. There was no noise. Whatever was protecting him from the flames also shut out all sound from beyond.
Turning, he reached out in the opposite direction. The corridor in which he was standing was no more than six feet wide, in places a little less. As he stared in amazement, the flames seemed to burn right through to continue their march of fiery destruction on the other side. Within the miraculous passageway everything was a calm, cool blue-green: the soaring but silent flames, the scorched earth they left in their wake, the bodies of small animals too slow to flee, even his own clothing and flesh.