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help but feel that, finally, his end had come.

 
 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 
 
    Gwen knelt by Godfrey’s side in the claustrophobic cottage, Illepra beside her, and could stand it no longer. She had been listening to her brother’s moans for hours, watching Illepra’s face grow increasingly grim, and it seemed certain that he would die. She felt so helpless, just sitting here. She felt that she needed to do something. Anything.
    Not only was she racked with guilt and worry for Godfrey—but even more so, for Thor. She could not shake from her mind the image of him charging into battle, set up for a trap by Gareth, about to die. She felt she had to do something. She was going crazy sitting here.
    Gwen suddenly rose to her feet, and hurried across the cottage.
    “Where are you going?” Illepra asked, her voice hoarse from chanting prayers.
    Gwen turned to her.
    “I will be back,” she said. “There is something I must try.”
    She opened the door and hurried outside, into the sunset air, and blinked at the site before her: the sky was streaked with reds and purples, the second sun sitting as a green ball on the horizon. Akorth and Fulton, to their credit, still stood there, on guard, and they jumped up and looked at her, concern on their faces.
    “Will he live?” Akorth asked.
    “I don’t know,” Gwen said. “Stay here. Stand guard.”
    “And where are you going?” Fulton asked.
    An idea had occurred to her as she looked into the blood red sky, felt the mystical feeling in the air, she knew that there was one man who might be able to help her.
    Argon.
    If there was one person Gwen could trust, one person who loved Thor and who had remained loyal to her father, one person who had the power to help her in some way, it was he.
      “I need to seek out someone special,” she said.
    She turned and hurried off, across the plains, breaking into a jog, running, retracing the steps to Argon’s cottage.
    She hadn’t been here in years, ever since she was a child, but she knew he lived high on the desolate, craggy planes. She ran and ran, barely catching her breath, as the terrain became more desolate, more windy, grass giving way to pebbles, then to rocks. The wind howled, and as she went, the landscape became eerie; she felt as if she were walking on the surface of a star.
    She finally reached his cottage, out of breath, and pounded on the door. There was no knob anywhere she could grab onto, but she knew this was his place.
    “Argon!” she shrieked. “It is me! MacGil’s daughter! Let me in! I command you!”
    She pounded and pounded, but all that came back in return was the howling of the wind.
    Finally, she broke into tears, exhausted, feeling more helpless than she ever had. She felt hollowed out, as if she had nowhere left to turn.
    As the sun sank deeper into the sky, its blood-red giving way to twilight, Gwen turned and began to walk back down the hill. She wiped tears from her face as she went, desperate to figure out where to go next.
    “Please father,” she said aloud, closing her eyes. “Give me a sign. Show me where to go. Show me what to do. Please don’t let your son die on this day. And please don’t let Thor die. If you love me, answer me.”
    Gwen walked in silence, listening to the wind, when suddenly, a flash of inspiration struck her.
    The lake. The Lake of Sorrows.
    Of course. The lake was where everyone went to pray for someone who was deathly ill. It was a pristine, small lake, in the middle of the Red Wood, surrounded by towering trees that reached into the sky. It was considered a holy place.
    Thank you father, for answering me, Gwen thought.
    She felt him with her now, more than ever, and she burst into a sprint, racing towards Red Wood, towards the lake that would hear her sorrows.
    *
    Gwen knelt on the shore of the Lake of Sorrows, her knees resting on the soft, red pine that encased the water like a ring, and looked out at the still water, the stillest water she had ever seen, which