5He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree to that, or in so far
As that I can see no way out but through—
— Robert Frost, A Servant to Servants
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Deeper into the woods, the undergrowth was lower and less impenetrable, the dense thickets of hazel and thorn they'd forced their way through opening out into a carpet of soft green. His father glanced around once, rapidly, before wading into an aromatic sea of wild garlic and ferns, the rustle of leaves unnervingly loud beneath his booted feet in the silence. He seemed to be making for the base of a stony outcrop a few dozen yards to their left. Shifting Jace's weight carefully onto his right arm, he cast a measuring glance upwards for a moment, and then began picking his way one-handed up the rocky incline as easily as if Jace were still a toddler in his arms.
Jace drew a long, slow breath and shut his eyes again, trying to force his body to relax, letting the darkness behind his eyelids settle over him, quiet and deep as drifting snow, the way his father had taught him. His leg had begun throbbing in time to the thumping of his heart with a savage, fiery pain. Maybe it had been hurting all along and he hadn't noticed. When he opened his eyes, the world seemed to wheel about his head for a moment in a kaleidoscope of leaves and broken bits of sky, before righting itself again.
"Father..." he said uncertainly as the forest floor sank steadily away below them. "What was that?" The vast Brocelind forest which ran north and west to the borders of Idris was dangerous, everyone knew that: infested with Downworlders of every possible sort. Even his father took care when travelling through it. But he'd never imagined the danger could come so close to home.
"I mean, I know the Clave haven't been able to clear Idris of Downworlders," he continued painstakingly, dabbing at a bleeding scratch on his face with the back of his hand. "That they aren't even trying very hard these days." It was a mystery to Jace why the Nephilim who battled so tirelessly — heroically — to keep the world safe from demonic incursion, would tolerate this spreading infection at the heart of their own lands. "But I didn't think Downworlders ever came down this near to the Glass City."
They had emerged onto a narrow, sunny ledge, almost an eyrie, perched high above the forest floor. Jace blinked in the sudden brightness, gazing around. Soft grasses and wildflowers waved in the breeze, spreading in a brilliant green carpet right to the edge of the precipice. At their feet, the treetops rolled away in billowing waves towards the broad valley they'd left behind; he could see the meadow where they'd been, a distant patch of gold that gleamed and vanished between the swaying branches. Behind them, a sheer cliff face towered still higher against the sky. The sleepy, metallic scent of sun-warmed rock was heavy in the air.
As defensible spaces went, it might have been designed on purpose; Jace wondered if his father had known it was there and been deliberately making for it. Not that there was any sign of pursuit. The woods around them lay drowsy and still in the brilliant sunshine, the silence unbroken except for quiet birdsong and the staccato drumming of a distant woodpecker.
But these were faeries that they were dealing with. Jace realised uneasily that he didn't know nearly enough about the fey — except that it was very unusual for them to be here.
"Demons are everywhere, Jonathan," his father said, as if in answer to the thought, as he set Jace carefully down with his back against the warm stone. "Until the world has been swept clean of their taint, nowhere beyond the walls of the Glass City can ever be completely safe."
A fleeting expression that Jace couldn't interpret passed over his face, eyes flat and remote as if they were looking at some distant and terrible vista Jace couldn't see.
"Even the demon towers are only defences, Jonathan, not immunity — never forget that. No fortress is impregnable. The only way to wholly safeguard humanity from this spreading infection is to wipe it from the face of the earth."
"But Father why would the Fair Folk attack us?" He was trying not to think about what his father was doing, because he was kneeling at Jace's side now with his hands on the injured leg, and Jace knew that what happened next was going to be unpleasant.
"A warning possibly. Against all likelihood, the Clave has begun pushing back in a small way against decades of Downworld expansion into Nephilim lands. The fey won't like that."
It was another mystery to Jace, how his father, who avoided Alicante as if it were populated by lepers and considered the Clave beneath contempt, was always so well-informed about its activities. But then, his father seemed to know about everything.
"The Fair Folk won't want open war: it's unlikely that the Queen of Faerie has given her formal sanction to the killing of Shadowhunters. But no court has control over all its subjects, least of all the fey."
The knife had reappeared, the jewels on its hilt gleaming like drops of blood in the sunlight as he shifted his grip. His other hand was clamped around the base of the feathered shaft, fingers scarlet and slippery with blood. There seemed to be blood everywhere, caked dark and drying around the soft leather of Jace's boot, and trickling slowly in a fresh stream down his leg, though it seemed as if the arrow itself had staunched the worst of the flow. Jace's stomach did a slow, unpleasant somersault.
"The Queen can easily disavow the actions of a few wayward individuals; I daresay she would not be unhappy to see her displeasure made plain in this way." His tone was analytical, detached, though Jace could hear the hard sheen of distaste in his voice, the way his father always sounded when he spoke of Downworlders. "A casual test of the Clave's resolve — which, Angel knows, she's right to doubt. I'd do the same in her place"
His wrist flicked, throwing sparks of sunlight off the polished blade — and with a jolt, the feathered tip of the arrow was gone, leaving only the bare shaft. Gripped tight between his father's strong fingers, the arrow itself had scarcely moved; already the pain was receding. Jace let out his breath slowly.
"But that's only a guess, Jonathan; there's really no saying. Faeries are wanton and cruel, and find pleasure in mortals' pain. It may simply have been bad luck that we strayed across a hunting party away from their usual haunts."
He was silent for a moment, hands busy with something Jace couldn't see, and when he spoke his voice was like splinters of glass. "Their bad luck."
For an instant, Jace saw something savage burning at the back of his father's coal-black eyes, and he felt the hair rise up on his arms. He wouldn't trade places with those faeries when his father caught up with them — not for all the gold stored in the vaults below the Gard.
His father had taken Jace's leg carefully between his hands again. As Jace watched, his face became perfectly smooth, the features wiped clean of all expression. His black eyes lifted to meet Jace's, and their steady gaze held a warning.
"The arrowhead is barbed, Jonathan." His eyes didn't leave Jace's face.
Jace nodded, swallowing, a cold feeling spreading in the pit of his stomach. He'd guessed as much somehow, maybe from the look on his father's face as he'd examined the wound back in the meadow. It was, he thought with loathing, exactly what you'd expect from the Fair Folk.
Of course Shadowhunter weapons inflicted savage violence too, but they struck cleanly: Nephilim fought to kill, not to maim. He could put an arrow through a man in a heartbeat, but it would pass right through him, not linger. It was why the targets had to be crammed so thickly with straw when they were set up in the water-meadows by the river for archery practice.
But Faeries' hearts were as twisted as a corkscrew vine: vicious and feral as rats, or the stoats that preyed on the ducklings you saw paddling by the bridge below the lawns, biting their heads off as they slept. If only he'd had his own bow with him, he thought with a wave of exhausted fury.
If only what was about to happen weren't happening.
His father was bending over him. Jace stared at the bright wedge of sky framed between the cliff and the line of his father's shoulder, eyes fixed on a dead branch silhouetted jaggedly against the brightness. You couldn't pull a barbed arrow out — the only way to remove it was by pushing it in: all the way in.
If only I hadn't begged so hard to take the horses out this morning, thought Jace with a sudden, fierce surge of regret. He could almost smell the flat, dry, library smell of ink and parchment, feel the sunshine spilling across the long oak table, its polished surface neatly spread with papers and pens and heavy volumes lying open on the table for reference, their pages held flat with any long object that came to hand: a ruler, a pen tray, an inlaid dagger — no doubt too, he thought ruefully, a book or two carelessly left face down with their pages splayed in the way that drove his father wild; because no threat of beatings or even the occasional actual thrashing could seemingly keep him from absently repeating the offence when he got absorbed in something.
This morning should have been Latin: Tacitus's Annals, which he found easy. By now, he supposed, he would have finished the passage his father had assigned him and be curled up cozily on the windowseat, as he was allowed to do once his morning's work was done, the next chapter of Moonfleet open on his knee.
Instead of lying propped on a stony ledge miles from home with a granite cliff-face digging painfully into his back and a band of faerie assassins scouring the hills for him — and something unspeakable about to happen.
But no: it had been a superb ride, until the arrow; far better than sitting cooped up in a stuffy library half the morning. If you wanted to spend your days poring over dusty old books in safety, you became a Silent Brother and went to live in darkness in the Bone City.
Warriors got hurt. You set your teeth and got on with it.
Taking a deep breath, he looked up into his father's face and said quietly, "I know. I know what you have to do, Father. I know that it—" He faltered, his throat suddenly closing. But he and his father didn't need words; his father would know all the things Jace couldn't bring himself to say out loud.
I know the arrow won't come out any other way. I know that it's going to hurt more than I can begin to imagine. I know you wish you didn't have to do this.
Shutting his eyes tight, he braced himself against the rough stone at his back, nails digging hard into handfuls of the springy turf; and he felt his father close long fingers like steel around his calf before grasping the arrow firmly with his other hand.
Agony tore through his body in a blinding meteor of pain and in spite of himself he screamed, his back arching, and felt the agonizing pain sear through his calf like a red-hot poker for a second time.
And then the fiery tide was receding, falling choppily back to something he could bear, and the vise-like grip on his leg was gone. Blinking the sweat out of his eyes, he saw his father impassively setting aside the bloody arrow, his face masklike as he felt in his pocket for his stele before reaching for Jace's arm.
Through the dwindling cross-currents of pain Jace felt the quick, sharp sear of the stele for the third time, an iratze this time, at last: a strong one that burned like a swarm of wasp stings. When he looked down, hesitating, at his bloody calf, the wound was already closing over, though there was a sickly greenish cast to the new skin, and the flesh around it looked swollen and inflamed.
"There's an enchantment on the wound." A weary disgust edged with anger curdled his father's voice. "As I might have guessed. It entertains the Fair Folk to barb their arrows with curses. But a powerful iratze like the one I've used should be sufficient to keep it at bay until you return to the manor. Which you are going to do, Jonathan, right now."
It was his voice of command, suddenly, the one you didn't even try to argue with, although Jace felt at the moment that he would rather do anything than move. Exhaustion was seeping into his bones like a boat whose planks had sprung, and his arms and legs felt like they'd been cast in lead. With a sense of resignation, he rolled reluctantly over onto his knees, and gripping the hand his father held out to him, hauled himself painfully to his feet.
Despite the summer sun, the light breeze felt cold on his face; to his horror, Jace realised that his cheeks were wet. He scrubbed them furiously with his sleeve, his face growing hot. But if his father noticed, he gave no sign.
"Tell Mordaunt it was a faerie arrow and that he may go into the Dispensary to get you a half-dram of Vivendum draught — the glass-fronted cabinet by the window: tall green bottle. The keys are in the top drawer of my desk. If I'm not back by teatime, he should administer a second dose."
"You're not coming with me?" The words tumbled out before he could stop them, dismay plain in his voice.
"With a band of murdering Downworlders roaming the countryside, Jonathan?" His father didn't trouble to soften the caustic edge in his voice. "I should hope you knew me better than that."
Jace flushed.
"You'll be safe enough on your own: the Diffraction rune will last for hours yet. In all likelihood I'll be back before nightfall to have a look at the leg myself. But the sooner we get that elixir inside you the better. I don't want to take any risks with that wound; curses can be tricky. Now then, do you think you can walk on it yet?"
It hurt, but it was possible to walk and even run. His father watched him without expression, before turning away to bend down and pick something up from the dirt at the base of the cliff. When he straightened, Jace saw that he was holding the lopped-off end of the arrow. The fresh green feathers looked duller now, almost drooping, like a spray of leaves left out of water too long. He had the bloodstained shaft in his hand as well. Jace watched him pocket both carefully before making his way to the pile of tumbled rock where Jace had come to rest, weight unobtrusively taken by the edge of a boulder.
For a moment he stood looking down at his son, and a brief smile warmed the wintry lines of his face. Jace felt the tight knot in his chest loosen a little for the first time since the whole awful business started.
"I'll come down with you as far as the edge of the meadow; we can take an easier route than the way we came up. I imagine that leg of yours is very stiff, but it should ease once you've walked on it a bit. Pity about your half-holiday, but we'll take the horses out again another day."
'Stiff', thought Jace, was a characteristic understatement, but it was probably true that it wouldn't hurt as much when the muscles had warmed up — his whole leg felt like a block of ice — and if it wasn't, well, you just soldiered on anyway. He was a Shadowhunter, after all.
Anyway, he'd be glad enough to get off this horrible ledge. If he never saw this particular sunny cliff face again, it wouldn't be too soon for him.
His father was waiting patiently for him, arms folded, but it was obvious to Jace's knowledgeable eye that he was in a hurry to be off. And with good reason, he thought: with every minute that passed, the trail would be growing colder. Unhitching himself reluctantly from the granite outcrop, he gave his father back what he hoped was a reasonable answering smile.
"I'll be fine." His voice sounded less convincing than he would have liked, but at least it was fairly steady. "I'd like to finish our practice with the caparisons sometime soon," he added more sturdily, and was rewarded with a succinct nod.
"As soon as that leg has healed." His father's voice held a note of caution, but there was a glint of approval in his eyes, the way he looked when Jace had accomplished some difficult or daunting task.
Gaze lingering on Jace's face, he reached out and brushed a tumbling lock back from Jace's sweaty forehead. "Off we go then." Setting a hand lightly on Jace's shoulder, he shepherded him around the jumble of fallen rocks towards the far side of the grassy ledge, before striking out swiftly downhill through the trees.
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Jace is putting on a brave face, but he's not out of the woods yet! Stay tuned...
In the meantime, if you enjoyed this you might try my other Jace and Valentine stories: Fall 1997, Discipline, An Orchard So Young in the Bark and Chiaroscuro. I like to think of them all as chapters out of a single, long story. If your tastes are more ecumenical, you might also enjoy my Valentine and Jocelyn fic, Odi et Amo, and my long Jace and Clary fic, Permanent Marks. Of course, as usual it's really all about Valentine... —MM