Scream of Stone

42

26 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen

Insithryllax turned in a tight circle, a hundred feet above the top of Marek’s tower. The wailing of the maurezhi demon tore through the dense air, and though the black dragon had heard screams before, of fear mostly but also pain, the sound of those particular cries made his heart quiver in his scaled chest. A demon shouldn’t scream like that, and no humaneven a Red Wizardshould be able to make one scream at all.

The dragon leaned into an easy descent, holding to his orbit of the tower. He dipped just below the roof line and passed the highest open window. As he flew by, the agonized screams of the demon rattled his ears and chilled his blood.

“… your failure!” Marek Rymiit hollered from the same rooma chamber that comprised the entire top level of the tower.

The demon shrieked anew.

Insithryllax wheeled around the tower, the tip of his left wing almost grazing the rough-cut stone blocks. Movement from the right caught his attentiona fury’s eel breaking the surface of the lake, one of its bulbous, fishlike eyes scanning the tower.

Even the eels can feel it, the great wyrm thought.

He passed the open window again.

“… to fail me like this?” Marek taunted.

The demon panted, and as Insithryllax turned again around the other side of the tower, it began to whimper.

The dragon was impressed on some level that the Thayan had the power to torture a tanar’ri, but the ice in his veins was something else.

Fear? the dragon thought. Could it be?

Once again he passed the window and heard the demon groveling, begging in a language Insithryllax didn’t know. He thought he heard the Red Wizard laugh.

When he pulled around the tower once more he riffled his huge, leathery wings, and in one beat of his heart Insithryllax was once again a hundred feet above the tower’s roof. He looked down on the tower when the demon started screaming again. The sound had changed once more. It was desperate, terrified.

Insithryllax looked out to the near horizon and tried to ignore the screaming creature. He’d been in the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen for more than five months. He’d spent longer than that confined to the little pocket dimension in the past, but the last months had been harder. Never had he felt so confined, and the emotions that seethed in him were as intense as they were alien. The anger he’d felt in Innarlith had been replaced by fear.

Insithryllax didn’t like fear.

The sound of the maurezhi’s screams cut off with a gurgling abruptness that could mean only one thing.

Finding it more difficult to breathe all of a sudden, Insithryllax turned, put even more distance between himself and the ground, and flew off toward the edge of the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen. The fear swelled in him and he choked it down.

He had to get out of there.