Table of Contents

Cover

The Crystal of Fate – Extract

Legal

eBook license

The Crystal of Fate

Guy Haley

Duke Phostrin, lord of the Sky Shoals, spoke. ‘Are you sure this will work, wizard?’

‘Yes, yes! Of course.’ The sorcerer Chalix clasped his long hands together in front of his chest and hunched in a manner that might have been a bow, had he ever shown any sort of deference to Duke Phostrin before. Phostrin contemplated the scrawny sorcerer for several hostile seconds. Chalix responded with a sharp-toothed, servile grin.

‘Do you have it, or do you not?’ the sorcerer asked.

Phostrin beckoned. His Chosen, five warriors almost as lordly as he, stepped into the chamber.

‘Vulcris, Barthon, Hurios, Dweft and Magazzar,’ said Chalix, naming them. All in the tower chamber were blessed by their god, but the gifts that Tzeentch had bestowed on the warriors were different to those given to the seers. Chalix was small, emaciated, his bones sharp through his blue skin. The Chosen of Phostrin were massive, swollen far beyond their natural size by magic, clad in gleaming armour of metallic purples and greens, featureless helms hiding their faces.

Vulcris and Dweft came forward, bearing a wriggling bag, which they dumped on the floor in front of the sorcerer. A pained whimpering came from inside.

‘Don’t hurt it!’ said the sorcerer. ‘How is it? Is it beautiful? Is it a fine offering for our lord?’

‘We chased the damn thing all over the Russet Isle,’ said Phostrin. ‘We nearly had it when the tribe there dared defy us. Too many of them grow rebellious as the news of Sigmar’s invasion reaches them, and these were no different. Once they were dealt with, Vulcris here nearly fell to his death when the creature tried to escape up the Marrond Cliffs. It cost us a lot of effort, so it had better be right.’

‘Well then, well then, let me see!’ said Chalix impatiently. Vulcris hauled the sack upright and tore the cloth open. He and Dweft tugged the sack down, revealing the head of the misshapen thing inside, and stepped back.

The sex was impossible to tell. Its head was a distorted ellipse, thicker and heavier at one end than the other so that the creature held it to the left. At the thinner right side, the lips of three small mouths smacked and squirmed over misshapen teeth. Seven eyes, two of them milky with blindness, were situated at random around its lopsided face. Only the nose was in the place nature intended, and it was twisted severely.

‘Exquisite!’ said Chalix. ‘Beautiful, beautiful!’ To admire his prize in full, he yanked the sack down and away. The mutant wore a tunic of rough cloth. It had three arms, very thin, tipped with three-fingered hands. Wiry hair covered the scalp, shoulders, and legs. The legs were well formed and muscular, but the feet were over-large for the body. The mutant flinched as Chalix wrapped his long fingers around its warty chin and tilted its malformed head upwards.

Behind the wizard was a tall mirror framed in glittering silver, a thousand representations of Tzeentch’s holy servants moulded into the metal. It caught the light shining through the chamber’s colonnade, so pure and sharp at the summit of the tower, and cast it up into the domed ceiling. Ripples of light moved around the frescoes there, as mobile as the reflections cast off Anvrok’s silver rivers. Phostrin avoided looking at the ceiling, wary of what the patterns might say to him. Instead, he took in his own reflection, large behind the simpering wizard. The patterns with which Tzeentch had marked his skin were bright upon his face.

Click here to buy The Crystal of Fate.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

The Crystal of Fate © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Crystal of Fate, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-026-0

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.