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Godsbane – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

‘This world,’ she says, ‘in fact, all the Mortal Realms, are riddled with calamities, just waiting to happen. They lie in wait like the mundane cast-offs of a merchant’s caravan. They moulder, forgotten, in sealed chambers and beneath long-fallen keeps and towers. Sometimes, they wander of their own accord, seeking the perfect victim to aid in their ultimate manifestation.’

Her students baulk. How could that be? The weapons of daemons and gods, artefacts of monstrous power, treasures capable of blights and miracles – just lying about, like a child’s toys? Clearly, they do not believe her.

‘I shall show you,’ she says, and looks to the apprentice at her elbow. The supplicant moves forward, eager to be rid of the heavy chest she’s been holding for her mistress throughout the lecture.

When the ark is laid upon the pedestal before her, Thelana Evenfall deactivates its magical wards, opens each cunning lock in succession, then lifts the heavy lid. In the high tiers of the amphitheatre, some of her students rise on their benches, necks craning to get an early glimpse of the thing she’s about to reveal.

Thelana’s elegant hands display the object for all present: simple, old-fashioned, its lines clean and graceful, miniscule script engraved upon its surface.

‘Here,’ she says, ‘we have a diadem, forged in an elder age, before the Ocari Dara. Not much to look at, is it? And yet, the power once contained within this forgettable bauble could have been used to tear Hysh itself asunder.’

Murmurs and whispers from the risers. Incredulity. Disbelief.

‘How’d it come to be here, then?’ one of them asks. ‘At this university?’

‘You say it once contained power – where’s it all gone?’

‘How do you know it was powerful? Were you ever present for its use?’

Reasonable questions, all.

‘I was present when a would-be claimant unearthed this particular treasure and put it to use,’ she says, knowing already that such a claim will not suffice. They will want more. More than she would like to recount.

‘Tell us,’ more than one of them now beg. ‘Tell us the story.’

Thelana sighs. Stares at the diadem. Remembers.

‘Very well,’ she says, and that is how the tale begins…

Between the Lothil Delt and the Stoical Vast lies a long, deep, twisting canyon that cuts through the southern desert of Ymetrica Coreward known as the Saratrai Chasm. Legend insists that the chasm is a scar upon the land – evidence of an aspiring despot’s immense power and stunning destruction. As you should all know from your studies, Spirefall – which we Lumineth call the Ocari Dara – was the era of this blessed realm’s permanent ruination and disfigurement, a price paid for the titanic hubris of its offspring. The tales of sundered cities, fallen towers and shattered landscapes are too numerous to recount. What is pertinent to our tale is this: once, a thriving city reposed at the very centre of the long, snaking skein of crevasses and canyons that make up the Saratrai Chasm. That city was ruled by a powerful Lumineth mage-king known as Ansorath, and it was Ansorath’s attempt to create an enchanted diadem capable of encompassing a god’s power that resulted in the broken, carved-out ruin that dominates the desert to this day.

Our story begins in one of the deepest and widest box canyons in the vast, meandering Saratrai network. On a morning like any other, a stranger arrived from the outer world, guided by ambition and a wealth of long-collated lore.

This newcomer rides in atop a jouncing, reptilian biped, the sort most of you call a hopdrake. His aspect is silent, stoic, his dour, bearded face shaded under a wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat, the tails of a long, mantled greatcoat fluttering behind him. A long-hafted, heavy warhammer hangs, strapped against his back – a weapon of duardin make – and numerous curious, fat pouches, phials and small, scabbarded tools and weapons encumber a pair of bandoliers crisscrossing his broad, powerful chest. Visible against his leather cuirass is an unusual badge, hand-fashioned from onyx by a skilled jeweller. It is a simple, almond-shaped icon suggesting an open eye. Only upon closer examination might one notice that the eye-shaped signet sports not one pupil but two, one very nearly eclipsing the other, like a moon in-transit before a shining star.

The stranger’s name is Zabayus Tarn. Coolly, appraisingly, he studies a particular recess in the canyon wall, feeling a flutter of vindication.

The recess before him is no natural feature: it was once clearly some sort of tall, broad gateway, carved into the stone. A large, dark gash in the cliff-side indicates that there is still a path into the canyon rock itself; a way still open, awaiting his arrival after a thousand years.

Tarn knots the reins of his hopdrake to a nearby thornwood tree and advances through gardens of fallen boulders, over fallen cyclopean pillars, past rolling bushels of wheel weed driven by the canyon’s hitching winds. At last, he climbs the cracked, wind-scoured steps that rise to a wide portico marking the entrance to this long-forgotten cavern city. There, beneath the shadow of leaning lintels and precarious, half-collapsed archways, he peers into a yawning, ancient darkness that has probably not admitted any explorer for centuries. He produces a white-jewelled torchwand – two cloudy white lumps of aetherquartz at either end of a wooden baton – then ventures into the black of the long-collapsed gateway.

Zabayus Tarn is not simply a treasure hunter: he is also a scholar. He has studied every historical account, first- and second-hand, that he could locate regarding this place. He’s braved spiritual scryings with lesser daemonic summonings in an attempt to see through the eyes of spirits who once inhabited it when living. His investigations – factual and supernatural – have given him a masterful understanding of both its architecture and layout, and he has committed this knowledge to memory. That crystal-clear image guides him as he wends his way through the darkness, scrambling over more fallen masonry, squeezing under toppled archways and between leaning columns and sagging walls, leaping deep, seemingly bottomless crevasses and edging precariously along narrow ledges over deep, fathomless gulfs. For hours, Zabayus Tarn braves injury and death as he picks a slow, methodical path through the sepulchral ruins.

More than once, he hears the scrabbling of claws in the dark. Vile things probably nest and hunt here – things eager for the passage of some unwary soul through their domain; things hungry because they rarely venture into the outside world, and even more rarely find trespassers in the ruins to satisfy their considerable hunger. At intervals, the canyon winds penetrate the cliff-side through internecine crevices, shrieking or sighing as they move through the ruined city, sounding like the moans of Chainrasps or the wailing of Banshees.

Tarn loses hours to the dark. He braves crippling injuries, even death, forced more than once to retrace his steps upon finding his chosen routes blocked or impassable. Finally, after completing a long, arduous vertical climb past three separate levels of yawning, empty passageways and ruined chambers, Tarn believes he may have come, at last, to his destination. Muscles aching, stomach growling, senses scrambled by darkness and solitude, he clambers over the rough lip of a ledge of shattered stone and finds himself in a broad, arcaded passageway leading to a tall, wide arch at the far end.

It takes him a moment to consult the mental map that has guided him; to check and double-check his progress against the theoretical arrangement of stacked living spaces, labyrinthine markets, and the core warren of the one-time ruler’s palace. Just ahead, through an open doorway, lies the object of his long and treacherous explorations; the culmination of more than a decade of desperate, some might say obsessive, academic work.

Zabayus Tarn pauses just long enough to restore his strength. He drinks some water; hastily devours a small portion of the rations he carries; rubs the soreness from his burning, aching muscles. Then, satisfied that he’s equal to the revelation awaiting, he steps over the threshold to claim his destiny.

The legends consulted – ancient transcriptions of oral accounts, epic poetry, drama, historiography – differ endlessly on the specifics. The broad strokes are, however, well established: once, a powerful mage-lord named Xymarkias ruled here, and for the greater duration of his rule, he was accounted wise and good, just and courageous. Xymarkias succumbed, however, to the overweening, malignant pride so common among the wisest and most powerful of the Lumineth in those dark days. Seeking ultimate power, ultimate insight, Xymarkias fashioned for himself a blood-gold diadem capable of acting as a second locus for both his memories and his consciousness. His intention was to absorb all of the knowledge, all of the experience, all of the skill and mage-craft that a mortal aelf could, letting what was too great or all-encompassing for his own mind spill over into the diadem itself.

Of course, his obsession and the vast repositories of knowledge that he attempted to take into himself drove him mad.

Unfortunately, Xymarkias’ fears and terrors were visited in corporeal form upon his people. His perversions and depredations held sway, infecting the souls and bodies of those not keen enough to flee the coming disaster. Likewise, his appetites and ambitions were writ large, fusing with aelemental powers already dwelling in that region, becoming stunningly potent and impossible to control. And so, over the course of a terrible, nightmarish day and night, the city in the cliffs was riddled with slaughter and disaster, riven by geomantic quakes and firestorms, and the whole subterranean kingdom tore itself asunder, killing thousands, including mad Xymarkias himself.

Tarn’s theory is that the king would have been reposed upon his throne when the end came and his world imploded upon him. If he could locate the mad king’s last location, then he could also, theoretically, locate the fabled diadem.

And claim it for himself.

The chamber he enters – dark save for the clear, white glow of his lampwand – does indeed have the look of a throne room or formal audience chamber. Within, Tarn finds a broad, ovoid space with vaulted ceilings, its rock and dust-strewn floor composed of handsome, magically shaped interlocking flagstones. These flags are arranged in complex geomantic sigils and knots not uncommon in the architecture of Xymarkias’ era. The walls are lined by enormous pillars – many cracked, some toppled, others simply pulverised. The stone panels between the pillars boast dust-choked sculpture and inlays. All about the chamber stand enormous, unhewn megaliths – great fragments of the cliff’s mantle that sheared away during the cataclysm to punch through the once-vaulted ceiling.

The throne chamber is a ruin. A tomb.

But, at the far end of the chamber, clearly visible beneath one of those enormous, fallen megaliths, Zabayus Tarn sees what he has always hoped to see: telltale steps rising to a dais… the sort of dais that might serve as the base for a monarch’s throne.

A great rugged megalith stands inviolate upon the dais. Any throne or fallen mage-king once occupying that space is now crushed flat, long vanished into dust. But Tarn already has a plan to locate the treasure he’s come in search of. He has eschewed the use of magic all through his terrifying, exhausting day so that every bit of energy and willpower at his disposal will be ready now, when he needs it the most.

He approaches the dais and the great block of broken stone squatting upon it. Tarn produces a small, palm-sized aetherquartz gem from one of the many pouches on his person, a gem attuned to concentrated magical energies. In the presence of such energies, it will glow. The more potent the energies, the brighter its brilliance. He holds the gem in his open palm and slowly edges towards the megalith.

Five steps shy of the great boulder, the gem begins to glow.

Closer. The glow intensifies.

When he is right upon the collapsed stone, squatting at its base, placing the gem flat against it, the gem pulses brilliantly, painfully bright in the darkness. Tarn feels his heart beating double time. Once again, he has been proven right.

Now: the excavation.

The hammer strapped across his back is inscribed on the hammerhead and along its grip-shaft with ancient Fyreslayer runes that glow a sinister vermilion in the darkness. This is no ordinary hammer, of course: Tarn had to trade a great many compromising magical favours and sell a large part of his personal library to acquire it. He has also promised to return it to its rightful owner when his mission is done – presuming he still lives. Going to such lengths for a single weapon might seem obsessive, but he’s known for some time that, if there was a great deal of fallen stone to disperse in order to reach his prize, such a tool would be required.

He utters ancient duardin prayers, calling upon the latent magical energies in his own body to invigorate the weapon and intensify its power.

The hammer all but hums in his sweating hands.

He chooses a target at the base of the great megalith, very near to where he placed the gem against the stone, draws back for a fierce strike, and swings hard.

The hammer shatters the base of the megalith as though it were pottery. It does not destroy the whole boulder – it is far too large to be destroyed in a single strike, even from such a storied weapon as this – but the effect is wide-ranging and immediate. In a shower of fiery sparks amid a sound like the roar of a fired cannon, a wide swathe of the megalith’s base cracks and shears away, the edges of the shattered stone glowing red from their sudden, violent sundering.

He strikes again. Again. Again. He’s like some strange, eldritch mining god, slamming his hammer home time after time, red-hot rock and glowing sparks spreading in all directions. Some of the flying debris slashes his face, rakes his arms or shoulders, splashes off his leather breastplate. He is burned – scarred even – but he does not care.

Finally, after a seeming eternity, Zabayus Tarn steps back to examine his handiwork. A tunnel of sorts has been hollowed out of the base of the great megalith, a ragged depression just wide enough to allow him to enter if he crouches down and shimmies in with his legs folded under him. He uses the haft of the greathammer to sweep the pulverised stone and rubble out of the space he’s made, then wriggles into the narrow aperture.

It has to be here. Somewhere. He’ll tear the whole, great boulder down if he has to, never mind that it’s as tall as a mega-gargant and half-obscured by the collapsed roof it fell through.

As he feverishly sweeps aside the rubble with the hammer’s ferrule, he suddenly hears a strange sound: a clattering, clearly metallic ring. It comes not from within the little space, but behind him where the rubble that he tossed has hit the dais and scattered.

Zabayus Tarn shimmies out, crawling around on the dais among the sharp, still-hot rubble, sweeping his gloved hands back and forth in search of–

There!

He finds it, half-covered with old stone and bone dust fossilised into a rough, uneven crust. Staring at the curious formation in his hand – a ring of something dull and metallic, clodded with stone and compressed earth – Tarn begins to feel a giddy elation. He slams his prize down upon the stone floor. With each impact, more of the crust falls away and more of the treasure is revealed.

It is beautiful despite its simplicity: a simple, blood-gold diadem, inscribed with the small, subtle marks of a long-vanished alphabet. For a long time Zabayus Tarn kneels there in the dark, lampwand throwing garish light and long shadows around him; he studies the treasure in his hands, located and unearthed by virtue of his faith, his scholarship, his courage, even his sweat and blood.

Does it still contain the power that Xymarkias poured into it?

Part of him, no doubt, recoils at the idea of simply placing the diadem upon his head. He is no fool. If the object once drove a Lumineth mage-lord mad and destroyed his kingdom, how treacherous and intoxicating must its power be? And yet, he cannot deny the attraction of such surrender. What good will it do him, to retrace his steps through this subterranean ruin and scurry back through the desert to the city by the Piercing Lakes where his magical laboratory waits, only to find, upon returning, that the diadem’s power was already long-spent? That it offers him nothing at all?

No. Better to test the thing here, in this deserted place, where only he is at risk. If the diadem destroys him, so be it: at least he will die alone and take no innocents with him. But if it proves to be as powerful as he suspects…

Drawing a deep, slow breath, Zabayus Tarn tosses his hat aside and places the diadem of Xymarkias upon his sweaty head.

For a moment, only a moment, the diadem seems not to fit, clearly fashioned for a head shaped differently from his own, and to very exacting specifications. But then, miraculously, it seems to loosen, to expand and remould itself. It settles into place around his temples as though it has been made for him.

And with that yielding, the diadem opens its secrets to him.

It is painful at first: the shattering of a dam. For an untold interval – minutes, hours; time loses all meaning – Tarn is assailed by thoughts and impressions not his own. He is launched high into vasty heavens, tumbling through magical riddles and strange geometries made manifest. He is dangling above horrid, hungry abysses containing secrets he never could have imagined. In that terrifying, seemingly endless interval, Tarn thinks that his consciousness – his mind and soul and very essence – might be blasted from existence by the strange, unidentifiable demiurge that inhabits the diadem.

And then, just as suddenly as it came upon him, it subsides. The tide recedes. Once more he is Zabayus Tarn, alone in a dark, ruined city untenanted for a thousand years.

And the diadem, now awakened, is his. So long as he possesses it, nothing can stop him.

‘At last,’ he says to no one. ‘The age of the Eclipse – the epoch of the Black Sun – is upon us. And this, this pretty little bauble, shall be the instrument of the great change to come.’

‘It is quite handsome,’ a stranger’s voice says in the gloom of the ruined, half-collapsed throne room. ‘I fear, however, that it shall only bring you grief.’

Zabayus Tarn spins towards the sound of the voice, searching the darkness for its owner. When he finds that he can see nothing beyond his immediate surroundings – he’s cast his lampwand down some distance away – he decides to warm up his new trinket with a purely utilitarian task.

Tarn imagines a colony of small, brightly burning stars in the air between where he now kneels and the chamber’s entrance. In answer, the diadem shivers ever so slightly upon his brow. Long-dormant power courses through it – through him. The stars appear, hundreds of them, drifting lazily, bathing the half-collapsed chamber in a soft, white-gold light that banishes the deepest shadows and reveals Tarn’s unwanted visitor – or rather, visitors.

There are three of them, standing in tight formation near the chamber’s arched entrance. At the fore is an aelven female – Zaitreci, if he is not mistaken, identifiable by the dark crimson skirts she wears beneath her golden battle armour, as well as the shimmering, frost-blue lunar runes engraved upon that armour. Her skin is pale tan, her eyes the colour of two deep, flashing, red-brown garnets. She might be a young adult, barely out of adolescence, or a seasoned loreseeker, well into middle age. Her ancestry and the long-lingering appearance of youth common among aelf-kind make guessing her age impossible. She holds a pale, elegant wraithwood staff in her hands, capped by a small crescent-moon headpiece housing a tiny, scintillating fragment of aetherquartz. A slender sword hangs sheathed on one hip.

At her elbow stands another aelven spellcaster – male, pale-skinned and raven-haired. This fellow is rather harsh of aspect – scowling, almost sneering – probably not Lumineth at all. He, too, holds a wizard’s staff at the ready, polished black steel and bearing at its summit a glowing purple amethyst.

The third member of the party is, like Zabayus Tarn, human: a man of youthful but rugged countenance, with thick, curling auburn hair and a handsome, square-jawed face. His staff sports a fearsome golden lion’s head, the creature’s flashing eyes in fact two magically bestirred rubies.

The aelven female steps forward.

‘Remove the diadem and leave it here,’ she says flatly. ‘Do so and there will be no trouble.’

Tarn’s head cocks in disbelief.

‘Who are you?’ he asks. ‘How did you find me? Find this place?’

‘Immaterial,’ the aelven female says. ‘Will you comply?’

No. He will not.

Tarn summons an image of what he requires in his mind – the enormous, swiping hand of an angry gargant, slamming hard against these would-be thieves. To unleash his will, he stretches out his hand. Pure, unbridled kinetic energy – an invisible wall of force – blasts outward, causing every carven pillar, crumbling wall and engraved flagstone in the throne chamber to shudder.

In answer, the aelven witch raises her staff, levels it before her, and throws up an unseen shield. Her companions do the same. The shockwave sweeps right over them like a white-capped river sluicing past immovable boulders. When the spent force slams the outer wall of the chamber, there is a thunderous shudder and small fragments of cracked stone rain down upon them.

The mountain groans ominously.

‘Who sent you?’ Tarn demands. ‘I’ve worked too hard and too long to claim this prize only to hand it over to the likes of you!’

‘You’ve searched hard and long, truly,’ the aelven female says, advancing again. ‘And you’ve shown great skill and daring. But I tell you, Zabayus Tarn, the power you’ve claimed is not power you can wield for long. It will destroy you.’

Her tone is of eminent reasonableness – one friend advising another, or a low-key diplomat arguing with a peer.

‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ Tarn says, dreaming up another surprise for her.

She stops a short distance from the dais steps.

‘My name is Thelana Evenfall,’ she says. ‘A loreseeker of the Lumineth. I have come here to apprise you of the folly of your ambition. If you leave here with that diadem, it will destroy you – and possibly all life in the Mortal Realms.’

Tarn has heard enough.

With all the power of his will, he summons a ball of pulsing, plasmic energy from the aether. The sphere – a marriage of searing heat and pure, undiluted, destructive power – grows in the palm of his hand and he drives it hard and straight towards Thelana Evenfall.

The aelven witch raises her wizard’s staff. There is a loud pop and a bright explosion as the crackling energy flares and dissipates in the air.

Very well, then. Something far more deadly.

Tarn reaches out with his mind, and brings the flagstones of the floor to life.

In an instant, a quintet of tall, lumbering stone giants tear themselves free from the floor of the chamber, trailing dust and dirt and broken shards of the bedrock. They are tall, awkward and malformed, but they move according to Tarn’s iron will. The chamber rocks with the loud, terrible thunder of stone scraping stone; of huge, rocky feet stomping and shuffling; of stony, dusty voices crying in idiot aggression as they charge towards the three unready wizards.

The handsome human is the first to face the fury of the stone giants as two lumber towards him and reach with eager, blocky hands. The square-jawed wizard scrambles for a place to make a stand, but his two blocky adversaries have him caught in a pincer. The young sorcerer stands, his back against the chamber’s outer wall.

Before the human wizard can find some solution, an escape, Tarn’s attentions are torn away as two more of the brutes close upon the second aelven wizard – the dark-haired male with the sullen look about him. As the Darkling aelf retreats, he conjures balls of flashing green plasma-fire out of the air and hurls them towards the advancing giants. The fireballs slam into Tarn’s blocky creations, exploding on impact. The fire burns hot, slagging wide swathes of their bodies and leaving glowing, superheated scars upon them – veins of bright red and sputtering green – before cooling and dimming to smooth, heat-blasted black, but none of the fireballs slow their steady advance.

The giants keep coming. The Darkling wizard’s options narrow.

A screaming roar and a stench like scorched air draw Tarn’s attentions from the aelven and human wizards to the witch who leads them. Clearly, she has a different bag of tricks up her billowing sleeves. She unleashes bright skeins of aether-lightning upon the stone giants, choosing the novel strategy of hitting each in turn with a full-power blast instead of trying to split the power differential between them. The giants are slowed by her attacks, each bending and thrashing under the weight of the lightning as it tears into them, immobilising one, forcing another backward as its partner manages to advance a shaky step or two before suddenly finding itself bearing the brunt of her onslaught.

Curse her! The witch is powerful.

It occurs to Tarn that now would be a good time for him to make his escape, while the wizards fight for their lives. A clear line of egress presents itself between the warring parties. Hastily looking to his adversaries, Tarn sees them safely distracted: the young wizard unleashing short-length waves of aelemental force from his staff that travel through the floor of the chamber, each shock sending the stone giants reeling; the witch’s fierce lightning and the aelven wizard’s searing green fire dazzling Tarn’s vision.

Tarn leaps down from the dais and dashes for the exit.

The Lumineth female sees him. Before he can attend to her, she unleashes a burst of lightning from her staff that strikes one of his nearer stone giants and sends the creature staggering backward – right into Tarn’s path!

There is no way to arrest his motion, to change his course.

Thus, Tarn does all that he could think to do: he wills the toppling stone giant out of his path. As the great lumbering form falls, it turns to dust and sand, and he dashes right through the billowing cloud of its remains, breathing in a great gout of dust that induces a terrible coughing fit.

Off to his right, the Darkling wizard loses his ongoing battle with the two stone giants that have cornered him. One closes its enormous, rocky fingers round his throat while the other grabs his waist in its shovel-like hands. As the aelven wizard shouts and struggles, the two stone giants pull and the wizard is torn in half. Blood and viscera paint the floor of the chamber.

Tarn registers the shocked face of the young human wizard – his terror, his disgust, his fury – then sees him make a breakneck decision. The human wizard rushes forward in three long steps, threading a narrow gap right between two closing stone giants and dashing past them before they can arrest his flight. Clearly, his friend’s sudden, horrible death has made him daring.

Tarn knows the young wizard is about to unleash some powerful, magical attack. Through the diadem, he unleashes a massive shockwave that drives back everything in its path. The air itself scuds in a rushing, white wall as the floor and ceiling before him buckle and crack. The young wizard throws up his staff and attempts a warding spell, but he is too late – the shockwave sends him rocketing across the chamber in a balled-up heap. To Tarn’s consternation, he also notes that his shockwave strikes two of his stone giants, pulverising both into rubble.

But he does not slow. There, right before him – there is the doorway! There is his escape. If he can just get back out into the passage and leave this chamber and his enemies behind him…

Suddenly, a bright flash – a flash so bright that Tarn reflexively raises his arm to shield his eyes. He hears stone crack and explode. The world is a hail of rubble and rushing wind. One of the stone giants has exploded. The outrushing, explosive force of its demise hits Tarn from the right and sends him reeling. He hits the floor, rolls, bounces over something hard. Before Tarn can make sense of what is happening, he slams hard into the wall of the chamber and feels the breath knocked out of his lungs. His vision goes black, aswarm with sparks and whirling shadows.

He may only have moments – the barest instant.

Coughing, sputtering, Zabayus Tarn struggles to his feet. He sways, dazed and unstable. He can make no sense of the whirling world around him. Nonetheless, he reaches out with his diadem, willing a massive, outbound shockwave – a burst of force and invisible heat so concentrated, so powerful, that it will obliterate his enemies in an instant.

The diadem obeys. Tarn feels the backdraught of the heatwave, hears and feels the chamber shudder in protest. Enormous shards of stone tear free from the ceiling, crash down around him. He thinks he hears more of the stone giants disintegrate before the searing wall of fire he’s summoned. He hears the explosive collapse of the dais and the megalith that stood upon it.

Then, blessed silence. There is only the sound of his own breath. The chamber cracks and groans around him, like a calving iceberg. It threatens to collapse in the next instant, to bury him in answer for the damage he’s just done.

Zabayus Tarn blinks. Gulps breath. Come on, come on… I need to see. If I can just find the exit again, I can flee, unencumbered, before this whole place comes down.

His vision clears, little by little. Zabayus Tarn swings his gaze about the chamber, seeking the piles of ash and smouldering remains that will assure him that his enemies have been vanquished.

Instead, he sees two upright forms in the gloom.

One: the young-faced wizard, lion-headed staff held out before him, bent and dazed, but otherwise uninjured. And there, directly before Tarn, in her shining golden armour and crimson robes…

‘Impossible,’ Tarn snarls.

‘The diadem gives you power,’ Thelana Evenfall says, ‘but we have power of our own. Surrender, before this whole mountain comes down upon us.’

‘I’ll show you power!’ Tarn roars, and lashes out with the magic of his stolen diadem.

These are the last things Zabayus Tarn sees:

A bright wave of plasmic fire, emanating from where he stands.

That fire, rolling outward in a wide arc to engulf his remaining foes.

The aelven witch and the young human sorcerer raise their staffs, almost in unison, shouting spell-words of their own.

The wall of fire and light recoils, changing direction.

The heat and light rush back towards Zabayus Tarn, vaporising him in an instant.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Lewis Jones.

Godsbane © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. Godsbane, 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.
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ISBN: 978-1-80026-607-0

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These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). 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.

* 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.