What do you mean "track the location of a file through directories"? Is something moving the file around? How do you identify this file? How often is the file moved? What is moving the file?

If the file is moved infrequently, then saving the path and only searching when it goes missing might work fine. You would basically be caching the location in a known spot. If you have control over the process moving the file, then restrict where it can be moved get it to tell the other process where to find the file.

There is no quick way to map from inode to the paths that link to the inode. Searching the filesystem is the best you can do.