“Are you learned in astronomy, Sister?”
“I confess ignorance in such matters. I learned no more than any apt pupil would in a convent. I can recognize the constellations and I can identify the wandering stars in the sky.” She smiled slightly. “I remember that Aturna takes twenty-eight years to circle the zodiac, while Mok takes twelve, but I confess I cannot recall the periods of the others. Somorhas and Erekes lie between Earth and the sphere of the Sun, so they are often lost in the glare of the Sun. Somorhas appears as both Morning and Evening Star, never at the same time, and sometimes disappears altogether. I pray pardon, Holy Mother. Early in my studies I became enamored of history, and I neglected the other arts in its favor.”
“So it appears,” said the skopos, yet by no means did she speak reprovingly, only to note what she had heard. A bell rang softly. The servingwoman hurried to the door, spoke there with an unseen servant, and returned to the Holy Mother.
“The emissary from Salia, Your Excellence.”
“Let him in.”
A portly man, flushed from the heat, knelt on the steps to kiss the skopos’ ring. “Holy Mother.” He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief, but it might have been fear of the hound and not the heat that made him sweat so freely. “I am at your service.”
“Here is Brother Severus,” said Anne to the emissary, indicating the elderly cleric. “You will take him personally to Salia on your return, and see that his every wish is fulfilled. He is my personal representative.”
“I am at your command, Holy Mother.” He spoke Dariyan with the distinctive Salian accent, the soft “v” hardening, the hard “gn” going soft. “I do not know if we can cross the pass this late in the year. I’ve gotten word that there’ve already been heavy snows in the northern passes, quite untimely.”
“But you have heard no reports from the western passes, Brother. I feel sure that if you leave at once, you will have a successful journey.”
He eyed her with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Perhaps he had heard the rumors that she was a powerful sorcerer, exactly the sort of person whose activities had been condemned as recently as one hundred years ago at the Council of Narvone. It was not something ever spoken of out loud and certainly never to her face.
Or maybe he was only afraid that the black hound was going to lunge to its feet and rip his face off.