From the introduction: Ik-jar-salim was the monkey familiar to the great and powerful efreeti Abjar Hakoor-du-Balom-Asktee-Nas-Jii, known more usually and simply as Lord Ash, faithful servant of Baal and Grand Sultan Ixingaltrix. Alas, powerful masters make powerful enemies and Lord Ash’s mighty spark was quenched, tricked into an iron flask that only — through a quirk of mad magic—could be opened by his familiar. This quirk appealed greatly to the somewhat twisted mind of Lord Ash’s enemy, a distant efreeti sultan whose name history has already forgotten. The familiar was, at the same time (and to ensure a good job done) destroyed, quite messily, before its master. The unnamed sultan laughed so much at the time he ruptured something crucial within himself and died some months later. The flask was sunk, along with its master’s vessel—the fearsomely reputed pleasure barge Furnace—into the Boiling River within the City of Brass and forgotten.