Redemption of Light (The Light Trilogy) by Kathleen M. O'Neal Page B

away. The lamp Ari carried trembled so badly that he couldn’t get a good look at the edges to see if they’d ever been cemented shut. The wavering flame cast the two men’s shadows like drunken sailors over the dusty white walls. Yosef turned and lifted a bushy gray brow. Funk might well set them afire before the roof had a chance at them.
    “Will you hold that thing steady,” Yosef chastised. “I’m starting to feel like I’m being followed by an army of ghosts.”
    Ari lazily examined the multiple images. “That’s because you’re senile. The vision center of your brain’s dead.”
    “Give me that lamp,” Yosef ordered. “You take the map.”
    He shoved the map at Ari’s bony chest and they made an awkward switch. Yosef clamped both hands around the base of the lamp and waddled forward again. Chunks of blasted walls towered around them like gargantuan sentinels.
    “Wait a minute.” Ari turned the map upside down and blinked curiously. “Did you see this?”
    “See what?”
    “Right here. The writing is terribly faded, but this looks like … like it lists this whole area as King Edom’s private chambers.”
    “Let me see.” Yosef squinted at the letters Ari underlined with a dirty finger. “Might be. What difference would it make?”
    “What difference? You are senile. Don’t you remember Rachel saying the library she found when she was here with Adom was just down the hall from Edom’s bedchamber?”
    Yosef blinked, trying to remember. He did forget things too often these days, but at the age of 327 memory had become a prerogative, not a necessity. His thoughts drifted to Adom, Horeb’s former Mashiah, and a forlorn smile curled his lips. The gangly good-looking boy had been the kindest, purest soul he’d ever met. Yosef exhaled hard. Adom had been a casualty of the planet’s violent civil war—killed by Rachel Eloel to take the heart out of his followers. Adom and Rachel had taken refuge in the polar chambers just before the war began. And, yes, now he recalled. Rachel had said that was when she’d found the rare books on galactic history that Mikael and Sybil still searched for—just down the hall from Edom’s bedchamber.
    “Of course, I remember,” Yosef admonished indignantly. He waved an arm to accent his certainty.
    “Well, then, let’s get going. Maybe seven-oh-three is the place.”
    Yosef gingerly slid around a precariously tilted slab that blocked half the forward passageway. His protruding belly skimmed the grime off the salb. The red dirt made a ghastly slash across the tan robe covering his navel. He brushed at it halfheartedly. They’d been searching this level for days, ever since Sybil had left on the food mission. By now, both of them looked like they’d been crawling through muddy ditches.
    Ari ducked and came through the opening after Yosef. Blackness met their searching gazes. Yosef lifted his lamp higher and walked forward a short distance. A massive spiky array of boards and rocks completely cut off the route, stabbing at them like defensive swords. A more narrow corridor opened to their left.
    “Well, what are we going to do now?” Ari asked, disgruntled.
    “Can we get to seven-oh-three by going down this corridor and around?” He held his light up for Ari to study the map.
    “The lines are so faded, I can’t tell. But it looks like we don’t have any choice.”
    Yosef started slowly down the narrow passage, placing his feet cautiously. Almost no debris cluttered this hall, though a fine mist of gravel and sand covered the floor like a gauze shawl. Yosef’s boots squealed as he walked.
    “Yosef—stop.”
    He turned. Ari had crouched on the floor to gently blow dust away from a splotch on the dirty white tiles. Yosef went to investigate, hovering over his oldest friend. “What is it?”
    Ari shook his head. “I don’t know, but it looks like—like blood.”
    Yosef bent down and touched the reddish-brown smear. It flaked off on his fingers.