Scream of Stone

34

17 Tarsakh, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) The Thayan Enclave, Innarlith

"It was Halina,” Marek said, his head heavy on his neck, his shoulders drooping. “It was my own niece, after all.”

“I’ll melt her flesh off her bones,” Insithryllax said in a voice even deeper, even more potent than normal. “I’ll dissolve her. I’ll liquefy her.”

They walked side by side in the courtyard of the evergrowing cluster of buildings, and Marek stopped short. Insithryllax continued another few steps then whirled on the Red Wizard. The dragon wore his human guise, but when he turned, Marek was startled by his eyes, which had gone entirely black. The dragon’s forehead furrowed and his jaw tightened into a trembling grimace.

Marek smiled, but at the same time had to clench his hands into fists to keep them from shaking.

“Is there something else amiss, my friend?” the wizard asked. “You seem”

Insithryllax turned away, and Marek wincedpeople didn’t turn their backs on him often, and the Red Wizard didn’t like it.

“How can you stand it?” the dragon grumbled.

“Insithryllax, what’s come over you?”

The dark-skinned man flexed his hands and his fingers stretched into horrible, elongated talons.

“Insithryllax,” Marek said, stepping closer behind him with some reluctance. “Remember yourself, my friend.”

The disguised dragon’s right hand shrank to its human form, but his left remained spindly and capped with razor-edged claws. A sound came from him that was something between human speech and the thunderous roar of a great wyrm.

A young wizard stepped out from one of the doors that opened onto the courtyard. She had been in Innarlith less than a month, having come from Thay to learn alchemy and make minor potions and ointments for the Third Quarter tradesmen. Marek didn’t remember her name. When she saw Insithryllax, she stopped, her eyes wide. She could see something Marek couldn’t Insithryllax’s faceand her reaction froze the blood in Marek’s veins.

“This isn’t like you,” Marek said. “Calm yourself. Now.”

Insithryllax turned his head and glanced back over his shoulder. Marek gasped at the sight of his twisted features. The transformation was blurring him, combining the human with the draconic to create a hellish mask of black menace.

“How can you stand it?” the wyrm said. “Your own flesh, a girl you took into your home, who had nowhere else to go and burdened you with her foolishness… and now she destroys something you worked to create? How can you not roar your rage to the skies? How can you not take wing, to drive her down before you and reduce her to paste?”

“Well,” Marek offered, “what’s a few zombies between an uncle and his favorite niece?”

“You toy with me,” the dragon growled, and the fingers of his right hand snapped out like whips, transforming instantly into talons to match his left. “Don’t toy with me. Tell me to kill her. Tell me to kill them all.”

Marek spoke an incantation and gathered a feeling of calm. He took a deep breath, held it for a few heartbeats while Insithryllax continued to slowly transform, bit by bit, in front of him. When the Red Wizard exhaled he sent a wave of calm washing over the dragon. It was a simple spell, but one Marek was^onfident would at least slow the black dragon’s mounting rage.

“Save your breath,” the dragon said. “You know you want her dead. She’ll start on the dock workers next. She’ll destroy everything you’ve built.”

“Not just her, though,” Marek said. The dragon turned away, wings beginning to sprout from his slowly-widening back. “That’s the thing, my friend. Kill her, attack her at the temple, and we make an enemy of her whole faith. They are hardly to be concerned with one at a time, but should their goddess take notice of”

“Goddess?” the dragon shot back, his voice so loud and so low-pitched it set Marek’s ears ringing.

The girl who’d been watching them from the door slapped her hands to her ears.

“Leave us…” Marek called to her, but he couldn’t remember her name,”… you. Leave us!”

The girl had her hands over her ears and couldn’t hear.

“Girl!” Marek screamed.

Insithryllax turned in her direction and she screamed, her hands still over her ears. Marek shouted for her to run, but she couldn’t hear him. A cloud of black mist washed over her, expelled from Insithryllax’s head, which had fully transformed into the head of a dragon. When the mist hit her, her skin blistered. She opened her mouth to scream again and inhaled a deep breath of acid. Instead of another scream, what came out was a white and pink froth. Her eyes melted into her skull and were gone entirely in less than a single heartbeat. The girl lived too long, dissolving away while trying to breathe and scream, but succeeding only in sizzling.

When she finally collapsed, Insithryllax tipped his head up into the sky and roared as his neck stretched. His tail lashed out behind him, his wings burst into full form, and he dropped onto all fours.

Marek ran through a spell more potent than the last, one that would temporarily rid the dragon of any intellect at all, leaving him open to whatever calming suggestion the Red Wizard chose to imbed in his consciousness.

“Insithryllax, please,” he said.

The dragon stretched his wings and with a groan his transformation was complete. “My friend, I-“

“No!” the black wyrm shouted. Marek stepped back, feeling as though the dragon’s voice had physically pushed him. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill them all. I’ll reduce their temple to mud. I’ll melt them from the face of Toril.”

Marek tried to make eye contact with the wyrm, but Insithryllax wouldn’tor couldn’t look him in the eye.

The Red Wizard brought a spell to mind as the dragon leaped into the air. It wasn’t easy casting it in the wash of dust and leaves under Insithryllax’s titanic wings, but he did his best to hold firm.

Marek’s spell opened a gray-black doorway in the air an arm’s length in front of the dragon, who flew blindly into the slowly-rotating zone of darkness. Without pause, the dragon, blind with rage, flew into the middle of it. When the last fraction of an inch of the black dragon’s tail passed through the horizon of the effect, Marek slammed it shut with an exertion of his will.

The door in the sky disappeared and took the dragon with it.

“Master,” a voice sounded from behind and above the Red Wizard. “Is everything well?”

“No,” Marek answered, then stopped himself and cleared his throat. “Everything is fine, but someone will have to clean up the… the…” Marek pointed at the still-sizzling remains of the acid-melted apprentice alchemist, “… the mess, over there.”

“The dragon is gone, Master?” another of the apprentices called from a window.

“He’s gone, yes,” Marek said with a sigh. He folded his arms across his chest and sighed again. He closed his eyes, thinking, wondering what could have come over Insithryllax. “He’s gone back to the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen.”

“Will he be back?” asked yet another wizard, one visiting from Thazrumaros to help the growing staff of the Innarlith enclave master the art of creating magic wands.

“No,” Marek said even as he considered whether he should bother answering at all. “He won’t be back until I bring him back.”

“Please don’t, Master,” the wandmaker said in a voice loaded with fear and on the edge of panic.