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 gemstone-studded 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.