But she did not want to think of Hugh now. She never wanted to think of Hugh again.
Gent’s biscop was a woman who wasted little time; Liath was sent back with a message that Werner could expect her within the hour and that a solution to this difficulty would be found before nightfall or else she would impose one.
When Liath returned to the hall, the deacon and artisan had, evidently, spoken already. Now the third representative, an elderly man in the good linen tunic of a person of wealth, regaled the mayor at length about the positions of the stars in the heavens and the fate they foretold for Gent in general and the mayor in particular. Werner listened with such rapt attention that he did not acknowledge—or perhaps he did not notice—Liath’s return.
“For in the writings of the church mothers, and in the calculations of the Babaharshan mathematici,” intoned the man in that sonorous voice only the truly self-important can manage, “it is written that the passage of Mok into the sign of the Healer, the eleventh House in the lesser Circle, the world dragon that binds the heavens, betokens a period of healing and hope whose emanative rays are only intensified by the passage of Jedu, the fierce, the Angel of War, into the same sign, as will happen very soon, very soon indeed, for fierce Jedu soon will move out of the Unicorn and into the Healer. So should you take heart that the heavens grant us hope at this dark hour, and you should be generous in relieving the burdens of those of us trapped inside your fair city.”
“Oh, spare us this nonsense,” muttered Liath under her breath. She regretted saying it at once. She had forgotten how well Sanglant could hear.
Sanglant glanced at her but said nothing.
“Say on,” said Werner to the man, who continued, oblivious to everything except Werner’s rapt attention.
“Yes, the heavens give us hope. You must not expect disaster for no comet has flamed in the sky and only such glowing swords portend ruin. Therefore, we may all feast and celebrate for our rescue is at hand—” Werner was, indeed, beginning to look more cheerful. “—and if gold is laid out in a pattern known only to me, then I can read by various diverse and secret means the exact hour and day of our liberation!”
“Ah,” sighed Werner ecstatically.
Ai, Lady! This man would do more harm than good. But Eagles had no opinions. Princes might, however. She had to risk it. “He’s a fraud,” she muttered under her breath.
At once, Sanglant lifted a hand for silence. “Where did you learn this knowledge of the heavens?” he asked the old man. “How can you assure us this is true?”
The man clapped hand to chest. “Noble prince, you honor me with your notice. I was trained at the Academy of Diotima in Darre, under the shadow of the skopos’ palace itself. In the Academy we learned the secrets of the heavens from the writings of the ancients and also how to foretell the fates of man and the world from the movements of the stars.”
“For a price,” said Liath. “Usually in gold.”
Then was aghast she had spoken out loud. But how could she help it? In all their wandering, Da had never passed himself off as an astrologus or haruspex—one of those men or women who claimed to be able to divine the fate of “kings and other folk.” Frauds, all of them, Da claimed, though he was learned enough that he could have made a decent living for them both had he been willing to do so. But Da respected the knowledge he had and, perhaps, feared it as well. It was nothing to trifle with. It burned in her heart that the knowledge he had paid for so dearly should be treated as merely another form of commerce—a lucrative trade visited upon the ignorant and gullible—by such people as this charlatan.
The old man frowned imperiously at her. “Mine is a proud trade, and though some in the church have frowned upon it, it has not been condemned—”
The deacon interrupted him. “At the Council of Narvone, the casting of horoscopes was outlawed. Only God and the angels may have foreknowledge of our fate.”
“Well, I—” he sputtered. “I do not cast individual horoscopes, of course, but I have great knowledge and none dare scorn me, for I know the ways of the heavens. I have studied the very Astronomicon of Virgilia and—”
Liath snorted. “Virgilia wrote the Heleniad. It is Manilius who wrote the five books called the Astronomicon that I suppose you speak of. And the Academy founded by Diotima of Mantinea rested in the city of Kellai, not in Darre.”
Sanglant coughed, but he was only stifling a laugh.
She faltered. Every person in the hall stared at her as if she had suddenly begun speaking a foreign tongue, like the disciples at the Pentekoste, touched by the Holy Word.
