Very old woman said to predict failure in honest spy

Usage examples of pythoness.

I praised the wisdom of the oracle, and kissed the Pythoness a score of times, promising that the cabala should be obeyed implicitly, adding that she had no need of being taught the science since she knew it as well as the inventor.

The palmers and the bandits, the cateran who had tried to kill him, Iachimo and the rogue star-sailor and its creatures, the two pythonesses of the Department of Vaticination, the old guard, Coronetes, and all the clerks and soldiers in the Department of Indigenous Affairs, the mage and the soldiers who had taken the peel-house, the traitor Torin, the Constable of Aeolis and his sons and the mob, Prefect Corin and the crew of the picketboat, Dr.

The palmers and the bandits, the cateran who had tried to kill him, lachimo and the rogue star-sailor and its creatures, the two pythonesses of the Department of Vaticination, the old guard, Coronetes, and all the clerks and soldiers in the Department of Indigenous Affairs, the mage and the soldiers who had taken the peel-house, the traitor Torin, the Constable of Aeolis and his sons and the mob, Prefect Corin and the crew of the picketboat, Dr.

I replied in terms, the obscurity of which would have done credit to a professed Pythoness, and I left Esther to translate the answer into common sense, and find a meaning in it.

Yes, and I told him that I had gained it from you without any sacrifice, and that now I was a true Pythoness without having to endure the torments of the tripod.

I praised the wisdom of the oracle, and kissed the Pythoness a score of times, promising that the cabala should be obeyed implicitly, adding that she had no need of being taught the science since she knew it as well as the inventor.

The ordinary citizens of Ys would believe a roadside cartomancer as readily as the pythonesses of the Department of Vaticination, and other departments no longer called upon its services when planning their business.

The fiend answered, "Nay: Sometimes we feign, and sometimes we arise With deade bodies, in full sundry wise, And speak as reas'nably, and fair, and well, As to the Pythoness did Samuel: And yet will some men say it was not he.

Even the bow of horn that the Pythoness, the Delphic Oracle, gave him to repel their assaults proved to be of little use.

The pythonesses and their domestic staff—the secretary, the bursar, the chamberlain, the librarian, the sacristan, and a decad of holders of ancient offices which had dwindled to purely ceremonial functions or nothing more than empty titles—raised up on a platform at one end of the refectory.

The rest of the domestic staff were grouped around other tables, and all were turned toward the couches on which the two pythonesses reclined.

It was the most difficult and most powerful method of all, and it was by custom what the pythonesses would attempt in two days' time at the public inquisition, although these days most clients wanted answers to trivial questions, to find things that were lost or hidden (wills were a perennial favorite, for many slighted by the wishes of rich, dead relatives came to believe that, hidden somewhere, there was a true will which would favor them), to speak with the dead, or to gain assurance of the success of a new business or a marriage.

Syle explained that in ancient times drugged pythonesses lashed to platforms on top of these towers had searched for intimations of the future in the patterns of clouds and the flight of birds.

The library is closed to all but the pythonesses and the highest officers of the domestic staff.

You have not shared it with the pythonesses, or you would not have brought me here to talk in secret.