Tessa screamed.
12
GHOSTS ON THE ROAD
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
--Alexander Pope,
"Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady"
Will stood upon the crest of a low hill, his hands jammed into his pockets, gazing out impatiently over the placid countryside of Bedfordshire.
He had ridden with all the speed he and Balios could muster out of London toward the Great North Road. Leaving so near to dawn had meant that the streets had been fairly clear as he'd pounded through Islington, Holloway, and Highgate; he had passed a few costermonger carts and a pedestrian or two, but otherwise there had been nothing much to hold him up, and as Balios did not tire as quickly as an ordinary horse, Will had soon been out of Barnet and able to gallop through South Mimms and London Colney.
Will loved to gallop--flat to the horse's back, with the wind in his hair, and Balios's hooves eating up the road underneath him. Now that he was gone from London, he felt both a tearing pain and a strange freedom. It was odd to feel both at once, but he could not help it. Near Colney there were ponds; he had stopped to water Balios there before journeying on.
Now, almost thirty miles north of London, he could not help recalling coming through this way on his way to the Institute years ago. He had brought one of his father's horses part of the way from Wales, but had sold it in Staffordshire when he'd realized he did not have money for the toll roads. He knew now that he had gotten a very bad price, and it had been a struggle to say good-bye to Hengroen, the horse that he had grown up riding, and even more of a struggle to trudge the remaining miles to London on foot. By the time he'd reached the Institute, his feet had been bleeding, and his hands, too, where he had fallen on the road and scraped them.
He looked down at his hands now, with the memory of those hands laid over them. Thin hands with long fingers--all the Herondales had them. Jem had always said it was a shame he didn't have a bit of musical talent, as his hands were made to span a piano. The thought of Jem was like the stab of a needle; Will pushed the memory away and turned back to Balios. He had stopped here not just to water the horse but to feed him a handful of oats--good for speed and endurance--and let him rest. He had often heard of cavalry riding their horses until they died, but desperate as he was to get to Tessa, he could not imagine doing something so cruel.
There was a deal of traffic; carts on the road, dray horses with brewery wagons, dairy vans, even the odd horse-drawn omnibus. Really, did all these people have to be out and about in the middle of a Wednesday, cluttering up the roads? At least there were no highwaymen; railways, toll roads, and proper police had put an end to highway robbers decades ago. Will would have hated to have to waste time killing anybody.
He had skirted Saint Albans, not bothering to stop for lunch in his hurry to catch up to Watling Street--the ancient Roman road that now split at Wroxeter, with one half crossing up to Scotland and the other cutting through England to the port of Holyhead in Wales. There were ghosts on the road--Will caught whispers of old Anglo-Saxon on the winds, calling the road Woecelinga Stroet and speaking of the last stand of the troops of Boadicea, who had been defeated by the Romans along this road so many years ago.
Now, with his hands in his pockets, staring out over the countryside--it was three o'clock and the sky was beginning to darken, which meant that Will would soon have to consider the nightfall, and finding an inn to stop at, rest his horse, and sleep--he could not help remembering when he had told Tessa that Boadicea proved that women could be warriors too. He had not told her then that he had read her letters, that he already loved the warrior soul in her, hidden behind those quiet gray eyes.
He remembered a dream he had had, blue skies and Tessa sitting down beside him on a green hill. You will always come first in my heart. A fierce rage blossomed in his soul. How dare Mortmain touch her. She was one of them. She did not belong to Will--she was too much herself to belong to anyone, even Jem--but she belonged with them, and silently he cursed the Consul for not seeing it.
He would find her. He would find her and bring her back home, and even if she never loved him, it would be all right, he would have done this for her, for himself. He spun back toward Balios, who looked at him balefully. Will swung himself up into the saddle.
"Come on, old boy," he said. "The sun's going down, and we ought to make Hockliffe by nightfall, for it looks liable to rain." He dug his heels into the horse's sides, and Balios, as if he had understood his rider's words, took off like a shot.
"He has gone off to Wales alone?" Charlotte demanded. "How could you have let him do something so--so stupid?"
Magnus shrugged. "It is not my responsibility now, nor will it ever be my responsibility, to manage wayward Shadowhunters. In fact, I am not sure why I am to blame. I spent the night in the library waiting for Will to come and talk to me, which he never did. Eventually I fell asleep in the Rabies and Lycanthropy section. Woolsey bites on occasion, and I'm concerned."
No one really responded to this information, although Charlotte looked more upset than ever. It had been a quiet breakfast as it was, with quite a few of them missing from the table. Will's absence had not been surprising. They had assumed Will was at his parabatai's side. So it had not been until Cyril had burst in, breathless and agitated, to report that Balios was gone from his stall, that the alarm had been raised.
A search of the Institute turned up Magnus Bane asleep in a corner of the library. Charlotte had shaken him awake. On being asked where he thought Will might be, Magnus had replied quite candidly that he expected that Will had already left for Wales, with the object of discovering Tessa's whereabouts and bringing her back to the Institute, whether by stealth or main force. This information, much to his surprise, had thrown Charlotte into a panic, and she had convened a meeting in the library, at which all the Shadowhunters of the Institute, save Jem, were commanded to appear--even Gideon, who had arrived limping and leaning heavily on a stick.
"Does anyone know when Will left?" Charlotte demanded, standing at the head of a long table around which the rest of them were seated.
Cecily, her hands folded demurely before her, suddenly became very interested in the pattern of the carpet.
"That is a very fine gem you're wearing, Cecily," Charlotte noted, narrowing her eyes at the ruby about the girl's throat. "I don't recall you having that necklace yesterday. In fact, I recall Will wearing it. When did he give it to you?"
Cecily crossed her arms over her chest. "I will say nothing. Will's decisions are his own, and we already tried to explain to the Consul what needed to be done. Since the Clave will not help, Will took matters into his own hands. I don't know why you expected anything different."
"I did not think he would leave Jem," said Charlotte, and then she looked shocked that she had said it. "I ... I cannot even imagine how we will tell him when he wakes."
"Jem knows--" Cecily began indignantly, but she was interrupted, to her surprise, by Gabriel.
"Of course he knows," he said. "Will is only doing his duty as a parabatai. He is doing what Jem would be doing if he could. He has gone in Jem's place. It is only what a parabatai should do."
"You are defending Will?" Gideon said. "After the way you've always treated him? After telling Jem on dozens of occasions that he had dismal taste in parabatai?"
"Will may be a reprehensible person, but at least this demonstrates that he is not a reprehensible Shadowhunter," said Gabriel, and then, catching Cecily's look, he added, "He might not be that reprehensible a person, either. In entirety."
"A very magnanimous statement, Gideon," said Magnus.
"I'm Gabriel."
Magnus waved a hand. "All Lightwoods look
the same to me--"
"Ahem," Gideon interrupted, before Gabriel could pick up something and throw it at Magnus. "Regardless of Will's personal qualities and failings or anyone's inability to tell one Lightwood from another, the question remains: Do we go after Will?"
"If Will had wanted help, he wouldn't have ridden off in the middle of the night without telling anyone," said Cecily.
"Yes," said Gideon, "because Will is well known for his carefully thought-out and prudent decision making."
"He did steal our fastest horse," Henry pointed out. "That bespeaks forethought, of a sort."