Its sinuous, grotesquely naked form was well muscled, especially in its legs, which were disproportionately huge compared to its upper body and head. Its feet were like a crocodile’s, with four big, pointed talons of yellowing, fungus-ravaged bone. It hissed at him, showing a mouth full of razor edged fangs.
“Calm yourself,” Marek said, passing a hand in front of the creature to enact a spell. “Be calm, so we can speak.”
The maurezhi seemed to deflate. It closed its mouth and stepped back, reaching out behind itself to lean against a battlement. Its eyes were the only part of it that didn’t seem to slow. They darted around, taking in the strict confines of the pocket dimension.
Insithryllax dived from out of the clouds and the demon watched it circle the tower once then land with startling grace on the battlements. Then the tanar’ri turned its attention back to Marek.
What are you? the thing hissed directly into Marek’s head in a voice like breaking glass. Human? What is this place?
“I am indeed human,” the Red Wizard said, stepping away from the demon but still exuding all the confidence he felt. “You will call me Master.”
The demon flinched at that and said, Master what?
Marek snapped his fingers and the demon’s forearm snapped. The creature howled in agony and grabbed the twisted limb. Its clawed hand hung limp at the end of it.
“You will call me Master,” the Red Wizard repeated.
Y-yes… the maurezhi begged, dipping its head low,… Master.
“Good,” Marek replied with a smile, and he snapped his fingers again.
The demon shrieked when its arm snapped back into place, then worried at it with its claws, surprised that it was not only repaired but that the pain was gone. Marek grinned, doubting the maurezhi would soon forget that lesson.
Why was I snatched from my torments, Master? the demon asked, and Marek could tell it still struggled with the title.
“Do you hunger?” the Red Wizard asked. Always, Master, the demon replied. Always. Marek remembered well his lessons on demonology. The vile maurezhi feasted on the flesh of their victims, and when they were done, they could assume the form of their former meal, only to move ever deeper into human society to eat, and eat, and eat.
“You will feast, then,” Marek promised it. “You will go to a human city on the world of Toril, and there you will find and devour a man named Pristoleph.”
'Pristoleph,' the demon repeated, nodding, and a great drop of yellowish drool hung from the side of its black lips.
The dragon huffed and Marek turned his attention to the huge wyrm perched on the battlements and sneering down at the demon.
“Yes, my friend?” the Red Wizard asked.
“Isn’t Pristoleph surrounded by black firedrakes?” Insithryllax said.
“He is, yes,” Marek replied.
“And you feel you have to summon this thing from a universe away rather than just give the creatures you created yourself a single order?”
“The black firedrakes were created to serve the Ransar of Innarlith,” Marek said.
The dragon smiled a little and Marek tensed under the dragon’s scrutinya look that came painfully, infuriat- ingly close to patronizing.
“If you’ll watch and see,” Marek continued, “all will become clear to you, I’m sure. Really, Insithryllax. Where has your patience gone?”
The Red Wizard turned back to the demon and said, “Yes, Pristoleph. But first, you must wear a disguise.”
The demon’s form blurred. It stood more erect and its legs shrank. Clothing formed around it almost as though it was weaving itself from the thin air. In a breath or two the monstrous entity had been replaced by a black-skinned man in rough-spun clothes. The gray eyes turned white and circles of deep, penetrating brown formed in their centers.
“Nicely done,” Marek said, and the transformed maurezhi smiled a broad, gap-toothed grin. “But not precisely what I had in mind.”
Marek cast a spell and the demon in its human form shrank away, holding up arms that even then began to lose their healthy color to return to that pallid, awful gray. It was only back in its natural form for a moment before its legs came together, its joints popped, and its skin tore.
The demon howled in pain, but the transformation didn’t take long.
It looked down at itself, confused at first, but then the admiration for its new shape was written plainly on its new face. The demon twitched its new body, testing its own ability to move like a snake moves. Its face looked more human than it had moments before, but when it opened its mouth, a long, thin tongue that ended in a fork flicked over its lips.
“There,” the Red Wizard said, “that’s better. Now, since I know you’ll be loath to tell me your name, I’ll have to give you a new one.”
“A name?” the demon asked aloud, surprised by the hissing sibilance of its new voice.
“Svayyah,” Marek said.
40
25 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
Pristoleph sat on a cool marble bench, letting the late summer sun that shone through the skylights and windows warm his already burning hot skin. The room was the uppermost floor of the second tallest tower of his magnificent manor home. From nearly a hundred feet in the air, the city looked peaceful, even beautiful, and Pristoleph often found himself drawn to that lofty space to sit alone and think.
His eyes drifted lazily from one of the sixteen triangular windows to one of the sixteen statues lined up along the walls of the octagonal room. He’d collected the statues for years, finding them in all corners of the world. Some were very oldolder even than the ancient empire of Netheril and others he’d had commissioned from the artists himself, the newest one only a few months before.
He turned his face back up to the skylights, which, like the windows in the tall, straight side walls, were triangles cut from the pyramidal roof. Through the skylights he could see the long orange pennant spreading itself along the gusty wind from its pole at the apex of the pointed roof.
Uncharacteristically calm, even contentif such a thing could be imagined from a man like Pristolephhe took a deep breath and smiled.
But his smile faded almost as quickly as it came to his lips. A strange feeling nettled at the back of his neck, and though he didn’t remember hearing anything, he could swear his ears had something akin to an aftertaste, the feeling of having heard something. He turned to look behind him but he was still alone in the big room. The statues all stood mute sentinel around the perimeter, staring out at nothing with eyes of marble, bronze, and wood.
In the center of the room, ringed by an ornamental railing of polished brass, was a hole down which a spiral stairway sank into the room below. Even as Pristoleph assured himself that there was no one on the stair, a scuffle of booted feet sounded from below, and the head of one of his black firedrake guards appeared, scanning the room with a furrowed brow over his coal-black eyes. He saw Pristoleph and came up to the top of the stairs.
“Ransar?” the firedrake said. “All is well?”
“I believe so, Sergeant Nevor,” Pristoleph said, “but I have the strangest”
Pristoleph was silenced by the black firedrake’s shuddering, strangled cry of shock and pain. The dark- skinned, black-clad man’s knees buckled and he dropped to the floornot dead, but nearly so. His longaxe clattered onto the wood floor next to him. Pristoleph stood as the huge, terrifying form of a water naga shimmered into existence. It stood just at the top of the stairs, behind Nevor, and by the way it held its right hand, Pristoleph could
