The Seventh Queen

The One-Eyed Seer

Rostown was busy, unusually so, I frowned in trepidation, looking around me at the hustle and bustle of the marketplace. Instead of sellers hawking their wares and buyers haggling over cost, the finest carriages and humblest carts were bounding along the cobbled streets, each vehicle full of passengers dressed in their finest clothes. The market stalls on either side of the road were boarded up and silent.

The sight in my one good eye was still strong enough to make out the coats of arms enamelled on the carriages. A carriage, emblazoned with the arms of the Baron Hicklethorpe of Temple Town, from the Lake Kingdom, his arms an Eagle clutching a crystal goblet in its talons on a red background,  passed me as I bumped into a man with a heavy bundle of apples on his back, I mumbled apologies at the man's back, he had already moved on, no doubt hoping to get to his destination so he could relieve himself of his burden. A minor nobleman from the Kingdom of Ice rode past on a horse, his badge of arms embroidered upon his doublet, proclaiming him to be a younger son of the Baron Wyndleham. The Baron was a notorious hermit, spending years in the mountain passes alone, and only re-entering society when needs must, whatever was going on here mustn't be too important, or the Baron would be here instead of his third son. 

The only reason for such a gathering would be a convocation, I surmised, but there were no signs of readying for war as much as I could see with my one worthy eye. I had discarded my fur pelts at the edge of the Kingdom of Ice, giving them to a kind family of prospectors that had been travelling in the opposite direction to me. I knew they would need them, my second sight had told me that, seeing a vision of them in distress upon the Valula Mountain, one of the most lethal in the causeway, before they had even crossed my path.

Silvestri circled above me, a flash of movement in the still sky, high above, unhappy to be so close to such an abundance of people, his natural wariness of humans ingrained too deep to overcome, I felt humble pride, that I was the exception to his rule of safety. I smiled wistfully, wishing that we could return to our solitary life together, knowing painfully that we could not, not now and never again. My foresight had already told me as such. 

My reason for being here, away from my pleasant simple life was to warn the Queen about the visions I had had, would she listen to them? I thought, worried as I shuffled along the marketplace to reach the Queen's Road, that lead to the Palace, only one way to find out, I told myself firmly, pulling up my shoulders as if to steel myself against what was to come.