Kiriy’s laughter stopped her.
“Understand this, my young and foolish sister, when Matron Mother Darthiir falls, as surely she will, it will be because Matron Mother Baenre is wise enough to no longer afford this
iblith
her protection. In that event, Matron Mother Baenre will have turned House Do’Urden over to Matron Mother Zeerith most of all, and which of us do you suppose our great mother might decide is most worthy to serve as Matron Mother of House Do’Urden in her continuing absence?”
Saribel didn’t answer, but silently reminded herself not to put too much stock into Kiriy’s predictions. Something was wrong here, and out of kilter. Saribel had not heard from Matron Mother Zeerith since the fall of Q’Xorlarrin—rumors said that Zeerith was hiding in the Underdark under the protection of, or at least with information supplied by, Bregan D’aerthe.
“If that is the case, then Matron Mother Zeerith will return,” she said meekly.
“She will not,” Kiriy taunted. “You will likely never see our mother again in this city. Her ways have long been gossiped about unfavorably by the other matron mothers, and now that Q’Xorlarrin has failed, more than one matron mother will think Matron Mother Zeerith a fine target for earning them the favor of the Spider Queen. Our path is to hide under the banner of Do’Urden—Xorlarrin is dead in Menzoberranzan. The sooner you understand that, the better your chances are of surviving.” She paused and grinned wickedly, making sure that Saribel was listening very intently before clarifying, “Of surviving my rule.”
Saribel left that meeting more shaken than she had been in many tendays. She had just started to find solid ground beneath her feet, had just begun to assert herself and press forward with daring plans to someday rule House Do’Urden.
And now entered Kiriy, her oldest sister, the First Priestess of House Xorlarrin, with a greater chance of ascension than she.
Saribel found herself wishing that Matron Mother Zeerith would return and assume command of the House. Surely that would destroy her own plans to become Matron Mother Do’Urden, perhaps forevermore, but better Zeerith and her even hand than the volatile Kiriy.
“You are a Baenre now,” Saribel whispered repeatedly, trying to convince herself that she would survive the reign of Matron Mother Kiriy.
Or maybe, she thought, she could quietly whisper in Tiago’s ear, and let Kiriy deal with his family should it come to that.
“I will be Matron Mother Do’Urden,” she stated, nodding. She thought then that perhaps she should go out into the Underdark to find her mother—she could preemptively warn Matron Mother Zeerith that allowing Kiriy to assume the throne of House Do’Urden could bring dire ramifications to the remnants of House Xorlarrin.
But she shook her head at that unsettling possibility. She would throw in with Tiago, she decided. If Kiriy got in her way to the throne of House Do’Urden, Saribel would find a way to use Tiago to be rid of the witch.
Saribel was pondering the benefits of being part of three separate families—Xorlarrin, Baenre, and Do’Urden—when word came of an urgent meeting in the audience chamber. She rushed across the compound to find Kiriy, Ravel, Tiago, and Jaemas already in attendance, along with a couple of House soldiers who had recently returned from the outer corridor patrol. Matron Mother Darthiir was there, too, sitting in the back like an ornament—and what more might she be?
The patrol members were in the middle of recounting their tale when Saribel neared the group—they hadn’t bothered to wait for her, clearly. She shot a sharp glance at Kiriy, who pretended not to notice.
Saribel sighed, but it was cut short when she finally realized the subject of the tale.
And the weight of it.
These drow, a formal patrol of House Do’Urden, clearly marked as such, had been attacked in the streets of Menzoberranzan!
“We must inform the Ruling Council immediately,” Saribel blurted.
“Do shut up,” said Kiriy, and when Saribel looked to Tiago, she found him looking back at her with open disgust.
“Likely rogues,” Kiriy went on. “What of Braelin Janquay?”
The scouts shrugged and shook their heads—too conveniently, Saribel thought, as if they had been coached.
“Was it Bregan D’aerthe, then?” Kiriy asked Tiago.
“To what end?” Jaemas added, his skepticism clear.
“Jarlaxle hates Tiago—that is common knowledge,” said Kiriy.
“Jarlaxle sides with the heretic Drizzt,” Tiago added.
Saribel stared at her husband, trying to read him. Given his honest reactions and expressions to Kiriy’s startling deduction that Bregan D’aerthe might have perpetrated the ambush, Tiago didn’t seem to be in formal league with Kiriy, thank Lolth. But he was no admirer of Jarlaxle. And particularly not now, when he was convinced that Jarlaxle had played more than a minor role in foiling his attempts to kill the heretic in Gauntlgrym and elsewhere.
Equally intriguing to Saribel was Jaemas’s reaction, though. He clearly wasn’t buying this theory Kiriy had floated, and indeed, seemed more than a little suspicious of Kiriy herself.
That might be a lead worth following, she noted.
“We should use this to defer from any further patrol responsibilities,” Kiriy said.
“We should prepare for an assault on our House,” Jaemas countered. “This was a brazen attack in a time when the Ruling Council has forbidden such infighting.”
“Bregan D’aerthe does not listen to the Ruling Council,” Kiriy replied.
“If it was Bregan D’aerthe,” Jaemas countered. “We have no evidence—”
“Who gave you permission to speak to me in such a manner?” Kiriy asked bluntly. “You are a nephew to Matron Mother Zeerith, and with no direct line to the throne of House Xorlarrin, yet you address the first priestess of your House with such familiarity?”
Jaemas shrank back. “Your pardon, First Priestess Kiriy.”
“If it was Bregan D’aerthe, then they have Braelin, apparently,” Ravel remarked. “In that case, they know much of our House defenses.”
“A third of our warriors were culled from the ranks of Bregan D’aerthe,” Tiago said. “They know everything of our defenses, and are inside our line already.”
Despite his dramatics, the others really didn’t seem too alarmed at his claim. Bregan D’aerthe had indeed supplied many of the House Do’Urden soldiers—in the beginning of the new House, Jarlaxle himself had been among that group. But Jarlaxle had slipped away and had replaced nearly all of his Bregan D’aerthe veterans with new recruits plucked from the Stenchstreets, Houseless rogues who offered little threat to House Do’Urden. Indeed, if it came to a fight with Bregan D’aerthe or anyone else, those new Do’Urden recruits who did not outright flee would almost surely fight for this House, their only House, their only real chance to survive with any dignity in what might come after.
Saribel found herself off-balance, as did Jaemas and Ravel, she noted. She would be wise to hold some private meetings with those two, perhaps.
“And now you serve me,” Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn said to Braelin Janquay.
The beaten rogue stood naked, his arms stretched out to the sides by taut chains affixed to stout metal poles. Two of Zhindia’s priestesses sat at the base of those poles, occasionally casting minor arcane enchantments: stinging jolts of lightning coursed the metal to Braelin’s singed and smoking wrists.
They cast their little spikes of torture quite often—too often for them to be actually casting the spells. Likely they possessed magical items with the magic stored for easy access, such as rings or wands.
Or more likely, Braelin realized, the brutal Melarni had constructed this torture location right in their chapel, with such magic built into the securing posts.
He wanted to get a look at the contraptions, out of simple curiosity and a desire to be distracted, but every time his eye wavered from the specter of Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn, who was sitting on a wide-backed chair with its metal twisted and etched to resemble a spider’s web with a thousand arachnids scrambling about, the priestess behind him whipped him with her scourge.
Braelin had not been very familiar with the Melarni in his days in Menzoberranzan. Like every male in the city who was not of House Melarn, he wanted nothing to do with the Lolth zealots. They were a particularly cruel lot, even by the standards of Menzoberranzan.
And they loved their driders, and had warped more drow into the eight-legged abominations than any other House in the city—than any ten Houses combined.
Braelin winced.
“If you will have me, I will willingly serve House Melarn,” Braelin replied. “I am glad to be back in Menzoberran . . .”
He gasped and groaned as the priestess behind him struck him brutally. The snake heads of her whip bit and tore long lines into his flesh, their poison igniting new fires so painful Braelin hardly registered the repeated jolts of lightning searing the flesh of his wrists.
“At least try to be clever,” Zhindia Melarn remarked. “Do you think I accept your loyalty? Do you think me fool enough to ever allow one of Jarlaxle’s lackeys in my ranks? And a heretic lackey at that?”
“I am no heretic,” Braelin managed to spit out before he got struck again—and again and again and again.
Nearly unconscious, his sense of time and place stolen by the blistering, tearing, and searing agony, Braelin was surprised to find Matron Mother Zhindia standing right in front of him, yanking his head up so that she could look him squarely in the eye.
“And a mere male at that?” she added with an evil laugh.
She spat in his face and whirled away. “Turn him into a soldier for the army of Lady Lolth,” she instructed, and Braelin knew he was doomed.
“I do not understand,” Matron Mother Quenthel said when Minolin Fey guided her and Mistress Sos’Umptu to one of Yvonnel’s antechambers. At Quenthel’s instruction, the illithid Methil followed.
A new construction lined the left-hand wall, a series of ten separate cubbies, each with a single seat large enough for one person to sit. They were designed so that someone sitting within could see out into the room, but could not view anything in any of the other compartments.
All of them now had easels, facing out and each holding a painting of a different drow woman, naked except for a belt of pearls and a gemstonestudded tassel, and in exactly the same pose.
“These were all painted at the same time,” Minolin Fey explained. “And by ten of Menzoberranzan’s most renowned artists.”
“Interpretive,” Sos’Umptu remarked.
“But not so!” Minolin Fey explained. “They were instructed by the subject to paint her exact likeness, and warned not to stray.”
Quenthel wore a curious expression. She looked from the paintings to the empty divan, imagining Yvonnel sitting there in the pose depicted, then turned back again to the paintings. Several of them were quite similar, but none exact, and often with differences too distinct to be an accident. Yvonnel’s hair was white in a few, pink in another, blue in a pair—nor was the cut ever exactly the same, and in the most disparate instances, not even close.
The same was even true of the hair on her loins!
“Matron Mother Byrtyn did an eleventh painting, with the same subject and the same instructions,” Minolin Fey explained.
“Then of course they are interpretive,” said Sos’Umptu, but Quenthel cut her short.
“Did the artists regard the work of the others as they painted?” the matron mother asked.
“No.”
“Then when they finished? Did they compare?”
“No, Minolin Fey answered. “They finished and they left.”
“And each was, in turn, congratulated by Yvonnel, and each believed his or her likeness perfect,” Quenthel reasoned, nodding with every word as she began to catch on.
“As did my mother,” said Minolin Fey. “A perfect representation of the subject.”
“Whose painting of Yvonnel was also as she sees the young . . . woman.”
Sos’Umptu looked at Quenthel, seeming at a loss.
“Which do you think most resembles Yvonnel?” Quenthel asked her.
The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith studied each briefly, then pointed to the third from the far end.
Quenthel looked to Minolin Fey, who answered by pointing to the painting nearest them, which drew a curious look from Sos’Umptu.
“We are not seeing the same person when we look upon Yvonnel,” the matron mother explained.
“We each see our own version of her,” Minolin Fey followed, nodding at her revelation.
“And is she not among the most beautiful, most alluring women you have ever witnessed?” asked Quenthel.
“The most disarming,” Minolin Fey remarked.
“Her very being is enchanted,” Sos’Umptu said. “She is cloaked in deception.”
“In illusion,” Minolin Fey added.
“Everything about her,” said the matron mother, her tone more of admiration than anything else. She gave a little laugh. “She lets each of us paint our own image of perfection upon her, and gains advantage in that. Are not the most beautiful prisoners the most difficult to torture? Do we not listen more attentively to people we consider attractive? Do we not hope for beauty to succeed?”
“Unless we know better concerning the motivations and intentions of the beauty in question,” replied Sos’Umptu, whose tone was much less admiring.
“What does she really look like, I wonder?” asked Minolin Fey.
“It does not matter,” said Quenthel. “She is no doubt beautiful, and adds the deception to elicit appropriate and helpful reactions from those who look upon her. Perception is everything in this matter. When we look upon another, I might see innocent beauty, where another would see sensuality and the promise of carnal pleasure, where another might see plainness. With our dear Yvonnel, though, it seems we see her as
she
chooses.”
“And where is she?” asked Sos’Umptu. “And what do you suppose she might do to you if she learns that you brought us to see this?”
“I did so at her bidding, Priestess,” Minolin Fey replied.
Sos’Umptu’s eyes widened, but Quenthel began to laugh.
“Because she does not care that we know,” the matron mother explained. “Yvonnel is secure now that she is in control. She is pleased to let us view this great achievement—and can we deny that it is exactly that? What power must it take to maintain such a distinctive illusion? Perhaps she shows us this to learn if we, knowing now the truth, can see through her facades.” She gave a helpless little laugh. “Though I am confident that we will not, and so is our dear Yvonnel, no doubt.”