The guy must be one of the workers who had been setting up the decorations around the platform in preparation for theshaman's arrival. I'd noticed the two-man crew, and I was now worried about the fate of the other one.
I rushed over. "We need to lift it evenly. You three on that end, we four will take this side. On my count..."
The wood groaned as we lifted, but it came up smoothly enough for others to pull the man to safety. As soon as he was clear, we carefully lowered the stage back down.
"Where is your teammate?" I asked. The man was injured and in pain, but I had to know whether we needed to look for his friend.
"I don't know," he murmured. "I don't know."
He seemed to be in a state of shock, and I doubted I could get him to focus for long enough to give us an answer.
"Another man was working with him. We must lift the stage again, and one of us needs to look under."
One of the guards heard me and rushed over. "I'll help. With four of us on each side, it's going to be easier to lift." He waved over another guard.
We took positions, while the other guard flattened himself on the ground, belly down, ready with a flashlight in hand.
"On three," I said. "One. Two. Three!"
We barely managed to lift the partially destroyed platform a couple of inches off the ground when the guard lifted his hand. "All clear. No one is trapped underneath."
We let the structure fall with a thwack that raised a cloud of dirt in the air.
I covered my nose by lifting my arm, but some of the dust got in my eyes.
"Good work," one of the guards said, clapping me on the shoulder. "You look like someone who has done this before, Elurian."
My accent must have given me away. "My cousin and I got rescue training after the tremor of 3385. Nothing like this, though."
"Oh, yeah." He nodded. "That one was felt even here. I heard there was a lot of damage in Vedona."
"There was. Many died."
Everything I had said was true, but our training hadn't been related to the tremor. It had just happened to start the following year.
Accepting my explanation, the guard clapped me on the back again and moved on.
Letting out a relieved breath, I wiped sweat from my forehead with my sleeve and went back to work.
19
KAILIN
"When shadows obscure your path and clarity fades, reach out for the truth. It will illuminate your way and guide you through hardships and uncertainties."
—Elucian Teaching
Ipressed another bandage against a bleeding wound, trying not to think about how many I'd already treated or how many more needed help. Gran had brought two large bags of medical supplies from the apothecary, and my mother had gone back for more, with instructions to call Shovia's family and let them know she was okay.
My mother had been grateful for the excuse to leave the bloody scene.
She'd never been able to handle the sight of blood. When Dylon and I were kids, a scraped knee or a bloody nose would make her dizzy. It had always been our father who had cleaned and bandaged our wounds.
Then again, he'd grown up under the tutelage of his mother, so he wasn't as squeamish around blood and knew more about healing.
"Here, hold this," I told the woman whose arm I was bandaging. She nodded, pale but composed as she took over applying pressure.
In her other hand, she clutched the two Bells of Truth that some Elucians liked to carry around, her lips moving silently in what I assumed were entreaties to Elu.
