The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 7: Chapter 6 — The Hill and the Gate

Read chapter 7 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Chapter 6 — The Hill and the Gate The streets of Runewick had quieted, but not the energy of the place. The hum she'd felt in her bones was stronger now, flowing through the ground. Every time it rose, the green shimmer on the clouds brightened. She turned toward it. The temple hill was visible even from here, rising above the roofs as a dark silhouette crowned in emerald. The glow was steady now, breathing in rhythm with the hum. Her chest tightened. The temple sat over the oldest rune chamber in the city, carved by the gods if you believed the priests. She'd never had reason to. The cultists' staffs had run a line of light straight to the spire. They hadn't caused this from the street. They'd opened something that had been waiting a very long time to be opened. She didn't want to go. She also couldn't look away. The whisper came again, alien and intimate at once. You'll die in the open. Protect yourself. Her heart skipped. "You again," she said quietly. "You can hear me?" Always. You called once. You can call again. The air around her cooled, the taste of iron sharp on her tongue. A tingling began along her arms, the same sensation that had come before each blast, pressure building under her skin, waiting. This time it didn't feel violent. It felt curious. "Protect myself," she repeated. "How?" You know how. You already did. Light shimmered faintly over her forearms, the green gone pale and quiet, bending the air around her skin. The warmth in her chest spread outward, threading through her shoulders, her ribs, her skin. It settled around her, weightless but sure. A shield. Not from stone or spellbooks, but from her. The voice, or whatever it was, hummed with approval. Better. Now walk. She let out a long breath and looked again toward the temple hill. The glow painted the undersides of the clouds, and the wind carried the smell of ozone and burned oil. She wanted to tell herself she was heading there to help, to find survivors, to do something good. But the truth was simpler. She was drawn to it. To the color, the hum, the steady promise that something alive was still moving in the ruin of Runewick. The armor around her flickered once, then steadied. She pulled her hood low, gripped her spear, and began to climb. The climb toward the upper wards was slower than she wanted. Every few streets, the way was blocked by fallen stone or the rib cages of overturned carts used as barricades. Fires smoldered in the gaps, throwing more shadow than light. The temple's glow bled through the haze. Yara's boots slid on dust that had once been roof tile. Each breath scraped her throat; she could taste the smoke from the lingering fires and the chalky ash from the dead creatures on her tongue. The hum in the air grew steadier the higher she climbed. It wasn't from the sky; it rose through the stone itself, thrumming into the bones of her feet until her teeth hurt. She passed houses that had belonged to merchants and minor lords, the colored glass windows melted into the street, brass lintels gone green and soft. Family crests had been scored through with knives. Overdoors, someone had chalked circles and lines in a hurry, crude wardings, some finished, others left half done. She recognized pieces of the language of light, the old patterns drilled into her by a hedge-priest when she was small. At a cross street, she paused. A shattered cistern still held water clean enough to reflect the sky. The surface rippled in time with the vibration. When she lifted her head, she noticed the vines along the walls. Their leaves had gone too green, not the tired olive of city growth but a lit-from-under color, veins pulsing faintly with the thrum of the heartbeat she felt. They climbed thicker as the street led upward toward the temple, wrapping around lampposts, sliding through window frames, coiling around a dead Guard's ankle, his body sucked dry and hollowed. Where they touched stone, the mortar looked pale and crumbling, the vines drinking its stren