“I think…” Dunsany called, “I think that he may be okay; though it’s sort of hard to tell.”

The sentinel screamed: a sound like a thousand stuck pigs squealing in a vast abattoir; a sound so terrible that it was a small mercy that Dunsany was instantly deafened in his right ear. It was no consolation for the pain he felt, however, as the sentinel jerked upright, gripped his face and attempted to pull the flesh from his skull. Dunsany thrashed around with his right hand, trying to get a grip on his sword, but his fingers kept skittering across the pommel.

In the end it took not only Illiun, but also Silus, Katya and Kelos, to pull the sentinel away from Dunsany, by which time blood was trickling out of his ear and angry purple bruises were rising around his face. Kelos skewered the twitching sentinel on his blade.

Even with a sword sunk halfway to the hilt in the sentinel’s chest, he still took a long time to die. Instead of blood, a pale blue viscous fluid slowly leaked from his wounds. From his mouth came a pungent smell, like burning hair.

“I thought that you said we could trust the sentinels?” Dunsany said, rounding on Illiun and gripping him by the front of his shirt. “That thing almost killed me.”

“I don’t understand,” Shalim said. “The sentinels have never done such a thing before. Illiun, what happened?”

“We felt a charge in the air, just before the sentinel went crazy,” Kelos said, turning to Silus for confirmation.

“Yes. Something like the feeling you get before a thunderstorm.”

Illiun walked up to one of the stones and put his hand to its surface. When he pulled it away, Silus noticed small flickers of static electricity leaping from the stone to his palm. “It’s in the stones,” he said. “Whatever affected the sentinel is in the stones.”