Free Wrath of Kerberos by Jonathan Oliver Page B

polished that even in the dim starlight Silus could see his reflection in them. They looked like great black jewels. He wondered whether this was what the desert itself was made from, these huge rocks whittled down to grains by the passage of time and the weather.
    Ahead of them, the sentinel had stopped before a cluster of the dark rocks. He held his metal staff ahead of him, his head cocked to one side, as though listening to something. Then he placed his staff on the ground and began weaving around the rocks. At first he appeared to be randomly careening amongst the boulders, but as Silus watched, he realised the sentinel was walking around the same seven stones, in a wide double loop.
    “Unit twelve,” Illiun called. “Have you found something?
    But the sentinel didn’t respond; instead he was humming to himself, a disconcerting sound that had something of the angry drone of wasps about it.
    Drawing closer to the stones around which the silver-eyed man was dancing, Silus could taste an unpleasant sour metallic tang in the air. He looked down to see the hairs on his arms rising.
    “Magic?” he asked Kelos.
    “No, I don’t think so,” said the mage. “It feels a bit like that first time we stepped aboard Illiun’s ship; that same charge in the air.”
    “Shouldn’t somebody offer to be our silver-eyed pal’s dance partner?” Dunsany said. “It looks like he’s getting a bit twitchy.”
    The speed with which the sentinel was circling the stones was increasing, each loop drawing him fractionally closer to the rocks until, inevitably, he came crashing to a halt.
    The sentinel lay in the sand unmoving, staring up at the boulder with which he had collided.
    “What the hells was all that about, Illiun?” Katya said. “Was the thing supposed to do that?”
    “Unit twelve, report.” Illiun called.
    The sentinel didn’t move.
    “Unit twelve, report!”
    Dunsany went to stand over the prone figure. The silver was fading from the sentinel’s eyes, flickering slightly as they dimmed. His mouth was stretched into a rictus grin and his fingertips danced lightly over the sand. Dunsany knelt down and put his fingers to the sentinel’s throat but could feel no pulse. He leaned over and put his ear close to the silver-eyed man’s mouth, listening for any sign of breath. But instead of the soft whisper of exhalation, there was a low buzzing sound, slowly gaining in pitch.
    “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