And even his body must have been close to its limits,
if it could be killed at all.
He was still in danger. If a salamander could destroy even such a body
as his, then the fragments of sun that were still roiling across the
landscape would be fatal. The only hope he had was to get as far away
from the place where the sun had struck as he could.
He braced himself to leave even the partial shelter. There was a pile of
water skins near the base of the block, held in the charred remains of
an attendant's body. The water was boiling, but there was still some
left. He poured several skins together and drank the stuff, forcing
himself to endure the agony of its passage down his throat. Without it,
he'd be dehydrated before he could get a safe distance away.
Then he ran. The desert was like molten iron under his bare feet, and
the savage radiation on his back was worse than any overseer's whip.
His mind threatened to blank out with each step, but he forced himself
on. And slowly, as the distance increased, the sun's pyre sank further
and further over the horizon. The heat should still have been enough to
kill any normal body in fifteen minutes, but he could endure it. He
stumbled on in a trot, guiding himself by the stars that shone in the
broken sky toward a section of this world where there had been life and
some measure of civilization before. After a few hours, the tongues of
flame no longer flared above the horizon, though the brilliant radiance
continued.
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