City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3)(119)

He shook his head. “No. For a change, something’s right.” He smiled at Clary, and there was nothing awkward about it: He looked pleased with her, and even proud. “You did it, Clary,” he said. “The Clave’s agreed to let you Mark them. There will be no surrender after all.”





18

HAIL AND FAREWELL


THE VALLEY WAS MORE BEAUTIFUL IN REALITY THAN IT HAD been in Jace’s vision. Maybe it was the bright moonlight silvering the river that cut across the green valley floor. White birch and aspen dotted the valley’s sides, shivering their leaves in the cool breeze—it was chilly up on the ridge, with no protection from the wind.

This was without a doubt the valley where he’d last seen Sebastian. Finally he was catching up. After securing Wayfarer to a tree, Jace took the bloody thread from his pocket and repeated the tracking ritual, just to be sure.

He closed his eyes, expecting to see Sebastian, hopefully somewhere very close by—maybe even still in the valley—

Instead he saw only darkness.

His heart began to pound.

He tried again, moving the thread to his left fist and awkwardly carving the tracking rune onto the back of it with his right, less agile, hand. He took a deep breath before closing his eyes this time.

Nothing, again. Just a wavering, shadowy blackness. He stood there for a full minute, his teeth gritted, the wind slicing through his jacket, making goose bumps rise on his skin. Eventually, cursing, he opened his eyes—and then, in a fit of desperate anger, his fist; the wind picked up the thread and carried it away, so fast that even if he’d regretted it immediately he couldn’t have caught it back.

His mind raced. Clearly the tracking rune was no longer working. Perhaps Sebastian had realized he was being followed and done something to break the charm—but what could you do to stop a tracking? Maybe he’d found a large body of water. Water disrupted magic.

Not that that helped Jace much. It wasn’t as if he could go to every lake in the country and see if Sebastian was floating around in the middle of it. He’d been so close, too—so close. He’d seen this valley, seen Sebastian in it. And there the house was, just barely visible, nestled against a copse of trees on the valley floor. At least it would be worth going down to look around the house to see if there was anything that might point toward Sebastian’s, or Valentine’s, location.

With a feeling of resignation, Jace used the stele to Mark himself with a number of fast-acting, fast-disappearing battle Marks: one to give him silence, and one swiftness, and another for sure-footed walking. When he was done—and feeling the familiar, stinging pain hot against his skin—he slid the stele into his pocket, gave Wayfarer a brisk pat on the neck, and headed down into the valley.

The sides of the valley were deceptively steep, and treacherous with loose scree. Jace alternated picking his way down it carefully and sliding on the scree, which was fast but dangerous. By the time he reached the valley floor, his hands were bloody where he’d fallen onto the loose gravel more than once. He washed them in the clear, fast-flowing stream; its water was numbingly cold.

When he straightened up and looked around, he realized he was now regarding the valley from a different angle than he had been in the tracking vision. There was the gnarled copse of trees, their branches intertwining, the valley walls rising all around, and there was the small house. Its windows were dark now, and no smoke rose out of the chimney. Jace felt a mingled stab of relief and disappointment. It would be easier to search the house if no one was in it. On the other hand, no one was in it.

As he approached, he wondered what about the house in the vision had seemed eerie. Up close, it was just an ordinary Idris farmhouse, made of squares of white and gray stone. The shutters had once been painted a bright blue, but it looked as if it had been years since anyone had repainted them. They were pale and peeling with age.

Reaching one of the windows, Jace hoisted himself onto the sill and peered through the cloudy pane. He saw a big, slightly dusty room with a workbench of sorts running along one wall. The tools on it weren’t anything you’d do handiwork with—they were a warlock’s tools: stacks of smeared parchment; black, waxy candles; fat copper bowls with dried dark liquid stuck to the rims; an assortment of knives, some as thin as awls, some with wide square blades. A pentagram was chalked on the floor, its outlines blurred, each of its five points decorated with a different rune. Jace’s stomach tightened—the runes looked like the ones that had been carved around Ithuriel’s feet. Could Valentine have done this—could these be his things? Was this his hideaway—a hideaway Jace had never visited or known about?

Jace slid off the sill, landing in a dry patch of grass—just as a shadow passed across the face of the moon. But there were no birds here, he thought, and glanced up just in time to see a raven wheeling overhead. He froze, then stepped hastily into the shadow of a tree and peered up through its branches. As the raven dipped closer to the ground, Jace knew his first instinct had been right. This wasn’t just any raven—this was Hugo, the raven that had once been Hodge’s; Hodge had used him on occasion to carry messages outside the Institute. Since then Jace had learned that Hugo had originally been his father’s.

Jace pressed himself closer to the tree trunk. His heart was pounding again, this time with excitement. If Hugo was here, it could only mean that he was carrying a message, and this time the message wouldn’t be for Hodge. It would be for Valentine. It had to be. If Jace could only manage to follow him—