What is "pythonesses"

Usage examples of "pythonesses".

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 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 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.

The two pythonesses would soon appear before their clients, arrayed in ancient splendor.

He had expected to find a crowd waiting for the pythonesses, but although a platform had been set up on the steps of the Basilica, its deck covered with landscape cloth and strewn with garlands of white lilies and trumpet flowers that already were beginning to wilt, the plaza was deserted.

He says that it is to provide the pythonesses with as much background information as possible, but I reckon that he doesn't really believe in the pythonesses' powers of prediction.

He marched solemnly ahead of the palanquins, carried on the shoulders of bare-chested thralls, on which the pythonesses sat.

The change raced out from the two pythonesses, so that they seemed to be couched on air, the heaps of white flowers at their feet like clouds.

Whatever it is that pythonesses actually do, it seems they get results of some kind.

And I understand pythonesses can't react to people unless they're actually in the room.