A Triumph of Souls (24 page)

Had they made an immediate charge, they might have succeeded in bursting through the oncoming flames with only minor burns.
Already, that option was denied them. Like the grassland behind, the fresh growth ahead was now fully engulfed.

With the flames advancing and the heat rising from the merely uncomfortable to the unbearable, they clustered together. Trapped
within his thick, shaggy coat, Hunkapa Aub was suffering terribly and on the verge of passing out. They had to do something
quickly.

Head inclined forward, Ehomba was searching the tops of the grasses intently. An agitated Simna watched him, wondering what
he was doing when they should be picking a direction in which to make a run for it.

“Bruther, there’s nothing there but grass!” Above the roar of the approaching flames he gestured sharply to his left. “I say
we try back to the west. The stream should delay the fire for a minute or two!” Instead of responding, the herdsman maintained
his intent exploration of the wind-whipped yellow-green blades. “Etjole! We’re out of time! What are you looking for?”

His lanky friend replied without looking up from his search. “Tomuwog burrows! They are our only chance.”

“What
burrows?” Sweat streaming down his face and neck to stain his shirt, the swordsman blinked as his companion continued what
appeared to be an aimless examination of the grass. Why, he wasn’t even directing his attention groundward, where one’s gaze
would be expected to be focused if he was hunting for some kind of den.

It made no sense. Never mind that Simna had never heard of a tomuwog and had no idea what such a creature might look like.
Even if it dug a burrow large enough for a human to crawl into, anything large enough to accommodate Hunkapa Aub or the black
litah would have to be a veritable cave, harder to avoid seeing than not. And they had passed no such opening in the earth
in the course of their flight. With the constricting blaze crackling all around, he turned a slow circle. There were a few
small holes in the ground, the largest of which would prove a tight squeeze for a corpulent mouse. Anyone trying to burrow
away from the flames would need not only a physical refuge, but one large enough to sustain a sizable air pocket.

“Bruther, this is crazy!” Spreading his hands wide, he implored his companion. “We have to make a break for it! Otherwise
we’ll…”

Ehomba disappeared. Not instantly, as if he had evaporated in the rising heat or vanished into some sorceral otherwhere, but
gradually. It happened right in front of the swordsman’s disbelieving eyes. One moment the tall southerner had been standing
before him, scanning the tops of the blowing grass. Then he started to go away. First his long spear, prodding and probing.
Then the hand and arm holding it, followed by the rest of him, until all had been erased from view.

Simna was not the only one startled by the herdsman’s unexpected and inexplicable disappearance. Hunkapa Aub walked all around
the area where Ehomba had vanished, and Ahlitah paced the spot sniffing like a huge black dog.

The flames were closing in, narrowing the circle of unburned
grass and breathable air. Simna started to cough, choking on the ashes from the carbonizing vegetation and the air that had
begun to sear his lungs. Surely Ehomba hadn’t abandoned them for some mystical refuge only he could access? The swordsman
had to admit that such a development was not beyond the bounds of possibility. How often had Ehomba spoken of the need first
and foremost to fulfill his perceived responsibility to the deceased scion of distant Laconda? How many times had he made
it clear, to Simna as freely as to total strangers, that the resolution of that journey took precedence over everything else?

A sweating Simna ibn Sind scanned his surroundings. Encircled by leaping flames, with the earth itself seemingly beginning
to incinerate around him, he saw nowhere to run, no place to hide. This was not a good place to die, out in open country witnessed
only by insects and rodents, his body about to become food for indolent meat-eaters that under normal circumstances he could
run circles around. From the time he had been old enough to understand the significance of life and the finality of death
he had planned to depart this plane of existence in a blaze of glory that would be immortalized in ballad and song. Now it
seemed he was to expire simply in a blaze, as something else’s dinner. Where were the cheers, the shouts to admire him as
mind and body shriveled and dissolved? The circumstances were ignominious to a fault.

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.

Looking back the way he had come, he saw that Ehomba too had acquired a soft tinting of pastel blue-green. So had Hunkapa
Aub, who had followed the swordsman to safety. Reflecting his own coloring, Ahlitah
was a dark shade of green. Among them all, Simna was the lightest in color.

Walking back toward his friend, he found that he could begin to feel the heat from the fire again. Pivoting, he discovered
that as soon as he took a few steps in the opposite direction, the threatening warmth dissipated. Hunkapa Aub joined him to
make more room near Ehomba.

“Where are we?” the swordsman heard himself wondering aloud. He did not expect an explanation from the hulking Hunkapa, much
less a reasonable one.

A hairy hand reached out to stroke the resilient, transparent wall. “Somewhere else.” It was as sensible an answer as Simna
could have hoped to receive.

As soon as the black litah had been brought to safety, Ehomba squeezed past them to take the lead again. Gesturing for them
to follow, he led the way through the last of the fire, heading west once again. Behind, the line of pyro predators began
to root among the charred rubble for well-done meals.

The blue-green corridor was not straight. It changed direction several times, winding through unburned brush and grass, down
gullies, and up over small hills. After an hour of this, Simna was moved to comment.

“It’s not for me to question how you saved us, bruther, but we’re well away from that range fire and the creatures that keep
it going. Why can’t we just step back out into the real world?” Behind him, Hunkapa Aub was having to advance bent double.
The ceiling of the passageway was not much higher than the corridor was wide.

“You can try,” Ehomba informed him without looking back, “but I do not think you will have much luck.”

Taking this as a challenge, the swordsman pushed
against the pellucid barrier. Beyond, unburned brush pressed right up against it, and a pair of small yellow and black birds
were courting only inches from his questing fingers. Ordinarily, they would have fled in panic, chirping wildly. But they
did not seem to see or smell him and did not react to his near presence at all.

He pushed harder, then leaned all his weight against the boundary.

“Here. Let me try.” Stepping up beside him, the black litah lifted a paw to expose five-inch-long talons, pointed like knives
and sharp as razors. Claw and dig as he might, they made absolutely no impact on the wall. The litah could not even leave
scratches. It was the same with the dark blue-green floor underfoot.

Having stood patiently by while his friends satisfied their curiosity, Ehomba now turned and once again headed off westward.
A thoughtful, somewhat chastened Simna followed. He was not upset or uneasy: only curious.

It was delightfully cool within the corridor, with even the sun having acquired a blue-green tinge. The surface underfoot
was smoother than the ground outside but not slippery: ideal for running. Only the absence of water concerned him. Their water
bags were more than half full, but despite the containers he toted on his back, Ahlitah needed to carry drink for Hunkapa
Aub as well. That portable source would begin to run out in less than a couple of weeks.

In response to his query, Ehomba assured him that he had no intention of keeping to the corridor for anywhere near that length
of time. His sole intention in disappearing into it was to find a means of escape and a temporary refuge from the fire.

“What is this place, bruther?” Within the passageway, voices acquired a deeper cast, reverberant and slightly echoing.

“I told you when I was looking for one.” The herdsman angled to his right. “Careful, there is a bend here. We are in a tomuwog
burrow.”

“Hoy, this is a burrow?” Looking to right and left, Simna could see clearly in every direction. The only difference from what
he would have accounted as normal was that everything he saw was tinted varying degrees of blue-green. “By Geletharpa, what
is a tomuwog? I’ve never heard of such a creature, much less seen one.”

“You will not see one,” Ehomba told him. “Unless you know how to look for them. They are difficult to track, even for the
Naumkib. I am considered one of the best trackers in my tribe. There is no reason to hunt them, since they make poor eating.
But in times of difficulty, their burrows can provide a place to hide. We were lucky.” He started to slow. “Ah, this is what
I was looking for. We can rest here awhile.”

A baffled Simna slowed his own pace to a walk. Try as he might, he could discern no difference in their surroundings, and
said so.

As he took a seat and began to unburden himself of his weapons and pack, Ehomba smiled patiently. “Stretch out your hands.
Walk around a little.”

The swordsman proceeded to do so. To his surprise, he discovered that they had entered a blue-green chamber some twenty feet
in diameter. The ceiling had also expanded, allowing poor Hunkapa Aub to straighten up at last. He stretched gratefully.

Simna found himself drawn to a seven-foot-wide zone
of glistening aquamarine-tinted light. It formed a translucent mound that reached perhaps a fourth of the way to the ceiling.
Extending a hand, he found that his fingers passed completely through the phenomenon, as would be expected of something that
was composed entirely of colored light.

“What’s this? Some distortion in the corridor?”

“Not at all.” Taking his ease, Ehomba was unpacking some dried fruit from his pack. “That is a tomuwog nest.” When the swordsman
drew his hand back sharply, his lanky friend laughed softly. “Do not worry. It is empty. It is the wrong time of the year.”

While Hunkapa Aub sighed heavily and stretched out on the floor, trying to work the accumulated cricks and contractions out
of his neck and back, the black litah explored the far side of the enclosure. Realizing that he was hungry too, Simna rejoined
his friend. Outside, beyond the walls of the enchanted chamber, blue-green antelope were methodically cropping blue-green
grass, entirely oblivious to the presence of the four travelers conversing and eating not more than a few feet away.

“These tomuwogs,” the swordsman began, “what do they look like?”

“Not much.” Ehomba gnawed contentedly on dried pears and apples. “The tomuwog live in the spaces between colors.” Mouth half
full, he gestured with his food. “That’s where we are. In one of the spaces between blue and green.”

“Excuse me, bruther? That doesn’t make any sense. There is no space between colors.” The swordsman’s brow furrowed as he struggled
with a concept for which he had no reference points. “There’s blue, and then there’s
green. Where and when they meet, they melt together.” He made clapping motions with his hands. “There’s no ‘space’ between
them.”

“Ordinarily there is not,” Ehomba readily agreed. “Except where the tomuwog dig their burrows. It is just a tiny space, so
small you and I cannot see it. Cats can.” He nodded to where the litah was still exploring the far reaches of the chamber,
poking his head into bulges and side corridors. “Ask Ahlitah about it sometime.”

“But this is not a tiny space we have been running through, and are sitting in now,” Simna pointed out.

“Quite true. That is because it has been enlarged by one or more tomuwog to make a burrow.” He gestured with his free hand.
“As I have already told you, this is one of their nesting chambers. Tomuwog burrows are hard to see and harder to find, as
you would expect of something that only occupies the space between colors. I was hunting for one while the fire was closing
in around us. As I said, we were lucky to find it.” Finishing the pear, he started on a dehydrated peach.

“The walls of their burrows are very tough. They would have to be, or people would stumble into and break through them all
the time.”

“And we’ve passed these things before?” Simna made stirring motions in the air with one downward-pointing finger.