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Oaths of Damnation – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

The Summoning

Damnation came howling out of the ether, reaching for the Hexbreakers with talons formed from hatred and hunger.

Daggan Zaidu sent the first back to where it had come from with the knife in his left fist, the straight-bladed combat dagger scything up and through the monstrosity’s distended neck as it lunged with a maw filled with fangs. Stinking black ichor drenched his armour, sizzling as it evaporated off the sigil-etched surfaces.

The monstrosity came apart, already replaced by another. Claws raked at his left shoulder but failed to register as the knife in his right hand carved off the offending limb before delivering the banishing blow.

They were fast, these ones, and numerous. The abbey was almost overrun, its heart ripped out by a pulsing abomination, a rent in the very essence of reality. Above the altar, the air was buckling as more and more warp matter forced its way into the materium, feasting on the warmth of existence. Translucent flesh hardened and became scabbed with scales and blotchy hides, horns sprouted and curled, talons went from soft and brittle to firm and wicked. Amorphous beings, denied for aeons, finally found form and threw themselves at the mortals before them, desperate to consume.

The Exorcists had come to deny them that. Though it seemed like reality itself was unravelling around them, the focus of the Hexbreakers never wavered.

Zaidu cut down another skittering horror and made a split-second assessment. The formation was going to be outflanked and overrun if they didn’t reduce their frontage.

‘Pattern cheit,’ he ordered his Reivers.

His Reivers. Simultaneously true and untrue. They were Hexbreakers, and thus under his command, but since his promotion to almoner-lieutenant just before the campaign on Demeter, he was no longer their squad leader. That honour fell to Belloch, who now snapped at Makru and Nabua to show alacrity as the exposed line cinched into a defensive circle.

It was knife-work, this – no bolters. Zaidu noticed that the abbey’s vaulted roof had started to come apart, the stones shaking loose from one another. Rather than caving in, though, they remained suspended in mid-air, forming a fractured arch of drifting stone, defying the natural laws of the galaxy.

Existence itself was about to collapse. Whether they were going to be overrun or not, they had to go on the offensive. They had to reach the rift and seal it, before it widened any further.

‘Accelerate tempo,’ Zaidu barked to his Reivers – his Reivers – trying to drive their efforts with their blades to the next level ahead of an offence order. He couldn’t fail now. It was unthinkable.

‘Pattern lamed,’ he barked. ‘On me!’

The Exorcists formed into a spearhead with Zaidu at the tip, the almoner-lieutenant dealing destruction with his twin knives. He was the Sin Slayer, a hunting hound of the Chapter. He would not be denied.

The altar, caught beneath the widening warp rift, had started to fracture, foul tentacles bursting and writhing from the splitting stone, as though some nightmarish beast had been sealed within it and was now free. The rising tide of flesh and fury railed at them, trying to rip them apart, trying to break their formation and drag them down one by one, yet the long blades of the Reivers kept the daemonspawn at bay, gleaming silver in the hellish, kaleidoscopic light that was beginning to suffuse the abbey.

A few steps more. The altar split apart fully, shattered stone forming jagged teeth as it became a gaping maw frilled with squirming appendages. Zaidu drove himself on, preparing to leap it and bury his blades into the mass of flesh spilling from the rift above it.

He faltered. The madness he had been in the midst of blinked from existence, not with the mind-aching horror of a daemonic infestation, but with the instantaneousness of a slide change in a pict projector. He was no longer in the abbey, no longer fighting alongside his brethren.

This was not what had been agreed. Was Vey giving him some new test? He attempted to raise his knives but found he could not. He couldn’t even turn his head.

He tried to speak but found it impossible. He fought to reach out to Vey, but the scene before him dragged at his attention, breaking his focus.

Two figures were locked in combat, fighting in the middle of a void that Zaidu’s mind seemed unable to process or comprehend. One was undoubtedly Adeptus Astartes, though a golden luminescence was shining from him, hiding his features and his heraldry.

The other was a Neverborn, a blood daemon. Zaidu knew it. A rare flaring of emotions torn from him long ago – hatred, rage, revulsion – suffused his thoughts, before realisation dawned and the cold control he was more accustomed to returned.

He knew what he was about to witness. It had played out in front of him before, many times.

He found he could move again. The golden warrior was gone – now Zaidu stood in his place. The daemon remained, shrieking a name with raw fury, garbed now in a face that Zaidu knew yet could not fully recognise.

‘Demetrius,’ the daemon wailed.

With a roar, Zaidu drove the blade in his hands into the beast.

Reality finally collapsed around him.

Discordance ripped through Torrin Vey’s thoughts, and for a moment his psychic essence floundered like a man who could not swim being cast into a frigid, raging ocean.

He hissed a catechism of focus, fingers gripping the sides of his throne until his knuckles were white and the brass skulls that decorated the rests were threatening to buckle.

It took barely a moment, but it felt like an age. He managed to regain himself, loosening his grip and easing out a slow breath that clouded in the freezing air of the psykhanium.

Something was wrong, very wrong, and he was not yet sure what.

The drill had been proceeding as planned. Almoner-Lieutenant Zaidu, seemingly dissatisfied with his current training facilities, had requested that Vey lead him and his Reiver squad in a psychic bout. Vey had agreed, conjuring a simulation of a particularly vicious daemonic infestation for the Sin Slayer and his fellow hunters to fight their way through. Such illusions were not simple, but the amplification of the psykhanium combined with the willingness of the participating minds had ensured the experience was not more than Vey could endure.

That was until he had felt Zaidu straying. The illusion had been broken by something, something that did not belong. And then, moments later, the discordance. Vey had not had a chance to piece it together, but it had caused him to experience something he was highly unfamiliar with – a loss of control. For a second, damnation had yawned, and he had been certain he was about to lose his grip and plunge into its embrace.

Not today. He had reasserted himself in time. But he needed answers.

The psykhanium chamber crowned one of the towers of the Basilica Malifex, second only in height and gothic grandeur to the astropathic relay pinnacle. Its interior lay beneath a dome of shielded, psi-reactive crystal, centred on a vision throne that sat at the top of a control column wreathed in cables and wiring. Arrayed around the column’s base were ten upright sarcophagi of brass and Banish corestone, linked back to it by more thick spools of power lines. Six of the ten slabs were currently occupied by Zaidu and his Reivers, while Vey sat upon the throne overlooking them, linked to them via the thickets of cabling plugged from the throne’s high back into the base of his cortex.

He experienced a moment’s pain as he broke both the physical and mental connections and rose, descending the ladder to the psykhanium’s mesh-plate decking. Doing so also caused the sarcophagi to disengage, the bolts containing their purity-seal-studded fronts thudding free. Hissing steam momentarily obscured the occupants before they emerged through it – hulking, skull-faced nightmares that Vey offered a fraternal greeting to.

Zaidu was among them. Like his Reivers, he was garbed in a black bodyglove that acted as his under-vest, the synth-skin dotted with ports that would allow his Mark X battle plate to interface with the Black Carapace beneath his upper dermal layers. Besides that, he wore nothing but his twin combat knives, sheathed over one another on a mag belt, and his death mask, a leering, fanged holdover from his days serving with the Reivers.

‘What happened?’ he demanded of Vey, voice as sharp as one of his knives.

‘I do not know,’ the Librarian admitted, unused to such an admission. ‘I experienced a psychic disturbance. Abrupt, and of some magnitude. I have not been able to identify its source yet.’

Zaidu began to respond, but the words faded to Vey’s hindbrain as a new sensation demanded his attention. A presence entered his mind, one he recognised. It was Enlightened Brother Dornmar, the only other Exorcists Librarian currently stationed at the Basilica Malifex. He came to Vey not with words, simply imprinting the knowledge he wished to convey directly onto his consciousness, an act that spoke of urgency.

‘A signal has been received,’ Vey told Zaidu, straightening out the impression made on him. ‘I must depart immediately to the astropathic relay. This session is over.’

‘Should I initiate emergency protocols?’ Zaidu asked. The other Reivers had gathered from their own sarcophagi around their leader, their skull masks grinning at Vey in the dissipating steam.

‘Not… immediately,’ he said as he finished ordering and interrogating Dornmar’s imprint. ‘I recommend you conduct purification rites. If there is pertinent news, I will inform you.’

‘I saw it again,’ Zaidu said, the statement catching Vey off-guard.

‘Saw what?’

‘My vision. Caedus. I defeated it again, but it was not like the first banishing.’

Vey knew of Zaidu’s visions, or at least what the almoner-lieutenant thought of as visions. He had been experiencing them since his initiation. Vey recalled how he had felt Zaidu’s mind stray moments before he had experienced the discordance. Were the two connected?

‘I will seek answers for both of us,’ he told the Sin Slayer. ‘Hold fast until my return.’

Vey did not go to Dornmar and the astropathic relay. Instead, he journeyed down, to the heart of the Basilica Malifex, the Cloister of Scars. From there he passed the Threshold into the Chapter Librarius, undoing the wards and speaking his name so he would be known to both the spirits of the place and the combat servitors hardwired into its outer pillars.

He knew what he was doing might be a mistake. Logic dictated he go immediately to Dornmar and receive his report. But the universe did not run on logic. There was something gnawing at the back of Vey’s mind, something more than the echoes of his Never-brother, Amazarak. Zaidu’s vision could not be a coincidence. The nature of whatever report Dornmar held would not solidify into the truth until Vey had received it. He believed he would find certainty not with the data-raving of an astropathic choir, but in the silence of the Librarius.

The primary chamber was vast, a cavity at the core of the Exorcists’ fortress-monastery, hollowed out and filled with the sum total of knowledge acquired over four thousand years spent warring with the daemonic. Arcane grimoires, cursed tomes, Ecclesiarchy doggerel and the ruminations of generations of the Chapter’s own Librarians and mystics filled the shelves, stacked under, alongside and above briefing transcriptions, tactical-goetic summaries, combat divinations, gene-files and star cartography.

No other Chapter was so wedded to theomantic esotericism as the Exorcists. Knowledge was power, and they knew its value. They had made the Basilica Malifex one of the greatest repositories of occult information in the segmentum, hidden from all but the Chapter and a select few members of the Ordos.

The floor of the Librarius – cold, smooth Banish corestone – was sub-divided into hundreds of sections via the thousands of towering bookshelves that filled the place. Made from black mirewood timber and carved with strange figures and goetic inscriptions, they sagged and creaked beneath the weight of multitudes of books, scrolls, parchments, data-slates and information crystals. The stacks formed narrow rows that seemed to go on forever, dimly illuminated by cobwebbed lumen orbs suspended from brass chains overhead. The shelves carried on up past the orbs, their uppermost levels lost in the musty darkness that shrouded the vaults.

Before Vey could advance into the library proper, he was approached by a gaggle of shuffling, hunchbacked figures – mortals, but garbed in the dark blue robes of the Librarius. They were bibliognosts, a subsect of the Chapter’s serfs, humans bound to live out their lives within the confines of the Librarius.

All of them had their tongues cut out at the beginning of their service. The first to reach Vey signed silently at him while keeping his gaze averted from the towering Exorcist, a ritualised greeting that put him at the Librarian’s disposal.

Vey waved the mortals away. He did not need their aid to find what he sought, and besides, he wanted to tangle up as few souls as possible in the web he was beginning to sense was now surrounding him.

He strode into the Librarius. The place reeked of damp and old vellum, dusty pages and cloying incense. It seemed to swallow the sound of Vey’s footsteps as he made his way in amongst the towering stacks. The only noises were the occasional soft fluttering of wings from things in the darkness above and the dry rustle and crackle of pages being turned somewhere amidst the endless shelves.

The rows loomed over Vey as he went deeper, the weight of their blasted knowledge seeking to bear him down. He muttered litanies he had learned on his first day as a Lexicanium, using their familiar beat and cadence to locate himself within the vast chamber and keep his path true.

It did not do to stray in a place such as this.

As he progressed, he passed several figures working in silence. The first was another blue-robed bibliognost, a series of brass magnification lenses lowered over her eyes as she tottered atop a ladder resting against one of the stacks. The second, a dozen rows on, was a wheezing servitor unit, bent-backed beneath a mound of books it was transporting with slow, shuffling steps.

Vey’s catechisms led him true. He found the centre of the chamber, the nexus where the stacks converged. A dense circle of lecterns, cogitator units and data-nodes, dusty, their screens fuzzed with age, surrounded a statue of a robed figure, head bowed, features lost in the shadows of a graven cowl. The Emperor of Man, in His guise as the Keeper of Knowledge. At the statue’s feet, in the centre of the cogitator circle, a set of black iron stairs spiralled away into darkness.

More bibliognosts stood at the lecterns and cogitators, the scratching of quills and the dull rattle of runeboards the only sounds. They were cataloguing, transcribing, translating or researching on behalf of the Chapter’s Librarians or the Inquisition. None looked up from their labours as Vey passed between them to reach the stairs.

He began to descend beneath the gaze of the Emperor. Down the tightly twisting stairs led him, into the space known as the Crypt.

It lay directly beneath the main Librarius, smaller than the grand chamber but still large and vaulted. Here the most damnable works were confined, not only texts but artefacts too – all manner of trinkets and reliquiae, from skulls and withered, shrunken heads to strange crystals, blades and daggers, cups, tarot decks, looking glasses and other arcane paraphernalia. The Exorcists knew the power of such objects, as well as their danger.

Vey was target-locked by another combat servitor at the bottom of the staircase, but it allowed him to pass. The air had a sudden, bitter chill to it, and he could feel the psychic tug and pull of the warding runes carved into the stonework around him.

He moved into the Crypt, beginning to scan the shelves. The books here were bound like beasts in chains and fetters, and every stack’s front was covered either with iron bars or sheer plates of armaglass. The latter was crazed and scarred by the scrapes of talons and the imprints of clawed hands. All the markings were on the inside.

Vey knew these shelves, knew the cursed weight they bore up. His hearing detected what sounded like whispers, breathed softly from between the stacks, but he ignored them. He counted himself past the Sixteenth Catechism of the Red Saint of Ophidia, the diary of Lord Commander Elgor Faust, Aktor Krell’s Lemegeton Profundis and the first and third scrolls of the Klepas Didactics. Between the final scroll of the Didactics and The Revelations of the Ruberics, he found what he sought.

There was a scrape of rusting metal as a servitor approached. The bibliognosts were forbidden from entering the Crypt. Servitors alone ran this part of the Librarius. Often one or more of Vey’s brethren would also be present, but currently he and Dornmar were the only Librarians in the Basilica Malifex – the weight of recent conflicts had spread the Chapter thin.

Vey used his gene ident to unlock the glass and unchain the tome he had sought out, before stepping aside to allow the servitor to properly remove it. The thing’s forearms were crude metal augmetics wrapped in purity seals and litanies from the Liber Exorcismus. Its function was the retrieval of texts such as these.

After a few tries with its pincers, it was able to heft the book down from the shelf and transport it to the nearest reading slab. Vey watched warily as the book was set down, its covers still chained. Its name was the Daemonarchia Claviculus, and it was the most complete list of Neverborn in the Chapter’s possession. It had been compiled over four millennia, a record not only of the common names – and sometimes even the True Names – of the warp spawn that had plagued humanity, but also a catalogue of their titles, ranks and appellations, and their standing within the damnable hierarchy of the empyrean. It was at once a vital and dangerous weapon in the Exorcists’ armoury, and only desperate circumstances made its evil a necessary one.

The reading slab lay beneath another large lumen orb, its light a rancid yellow, the inside of its lower half befouled where grime had collected over the millennia. The slab itself was carved with hexagrammatic runes and the names of the Seven Planetary Talismans, along with five versions of the diagrams of the Sigilus Dei Imperator Aemath, the Seal of the Emperor’s Truth. Vey would have preferred to employ more arcane tools – his black-and-red Rod of El and his incantation bowl. For a proper reading he would have anointed himself with sanctified acid-water from the marshlands surrounding the Basilica Malifex, or pentacle runes in ash from the Eternal Pyre that burned atop the fortress-monastery’s pinnacle, but there was no time for any of that. Vey was experienced in the occult ways of what the Chapter called goetia – black magicks and daemonologie. He had to press on, or he would run out of time.

The servitor retreated, and Vey stood over the book. It took a moment to find his focus, briefly touching two fingers to his forehead before undoing the chains.

The response was immediate. Before he had even touched its cover, the Daemonarchia slammed open with a clap like thunder. At the same time, the lumen overhead stuttered and went out.

Vey’s body went instinctively to combat readiness. He heard a whirring from nearby – the servitor. The whispers he had caught earlier returned, scratching at the edge of his hearing. His hands clenched into fists, and he half turned, seeking an enemy he knew was not there. He yearned to feel the hilt of his force sword, Kerubim, in his grasp.

The lumen struggled back to life. Damnation lay open before Vey – the Daemonarchia, darkness coiling up from the flayed skin of its pages, the physical corruption visible to Vey’s witch-sight. The taint was bleeding from it, clawing at the bindings of the reading slab as it sought to reach him.

It would find no purchase in him. His soul was a fallow field where even the deepest, bitterest root of corruption would not lodge itself.

The servitor had turned and was now staring at him, its one organic eye dull but fixed on him.

Vey returned its gaze for a moment, then, slowly, turned back towards the book. Twin hearts beating, he leaned over and forced himself to read the blasphemous names and titles inked with blood onto the ancient skin, pinning each writhing word in place with a murmured catechism of command.

The Red Marshal, formally Seneschal of the Fortress of Bone and Keeper of the Blood Hounds Carnus and Slaught. Known upon Arava Prime as the Crimson Vengeance, upon Antraxus VI as the Warlord of Warlords and within the Ignatius Sector as the Butcher Baron. Since its great and grievous defeat upon Fidem IV, it has been called most commonly, in the vulgar tongue of mortals, Caedus.

The servitor lunged for him. Subconsciously, Vey had been ready for it. He caught the clumsy thrust of its forearms, twisting and grasping its head in one great hand as he put his body between it and the book. He wrenched at its skull, his positioning ensuring the blood and oils from the torn flesh and ruptured machinery did not strike the Daemonarchia. Blood, touching the accursed pages, would have unleashed more than Vey was prepared to deal with.

The servitor went stiff and still, dead. Vey dropped it and turned back to the book.

‘It has returned,’ said a voice.

There was a figure, standing in the shadows between the book stacks opposite the slab. Vey found himself looking into the face of death.

He realised Zaidu had followed him.

He did not bother to question how the almoner-lieutenant had gained access to the Crypt. Though they guarded their knowledge carefully from outsiders, any within the Chapter’s complex command hierarchy – be it the Twelvefold Commandery, the Convocation of Four or the Lesser Convocation of Forty-Eight – could access the Librarius. As a newly inducted member of the lattermost body, Zaidu’s presence here was not unwarranted. What irked Vey was that the Sin Slayer had followed him, and that he had done so without Vey sensing his presence.

‘It has returned, yes,’ the Librarian said, making himself answer Zaidu directly and speak the truth, despite his reluctance to do so.

Zaidu made no physical response to Vey’s confirmation, other than to pause briefly before speaking again.

‘Then it is bound for Fidem IV.’

‘That is likely.’

‘Have the Chapter hierarchy been informed?’

‘I do not know. I have yet to visit Dornmar. I wished to test the weave of fate here before I committed to speaking to him. But if it is as we both fear, I am authorised to take immediate action.’

‘And what will that action be, enlightened brother?’

Vey took a breath, fixing Zaidu with his gaze before speaking.

‘You will prepare your Hexbreakers, and be ready to depart aboard the Witch-Bane on the eleventh bell.’

‘Is there a briefing packet? Hypno-data for the voyage?’

‘There will be by the time you board. I will compile it as soon as I have received the astropathic report.’

Zaidu nodded. Vey knew he needed to be as careful with the almoner-lieutenant as he was being with the Daemonarchia. He was like a keen, unsheathed blade – deadly when used well, but capable of wounding its owner if not wielded with control. Vey decided it was better to press him now rather than later. He needed to get a good, confident grip on him if he was going to use him correctly.

‘Will the Hexbreakers be ready at such short notice?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Zaidu said. Vey experienced a quickening of his senses, an unwelcome sharpness that linked back to the days of his initiation rites, long ago. It was akin to the heightening all Space Marines experienced when about to enter combat, a glanding of stimms and hormones, but this was something more, something truly predatory and instinctive. He tasted a passing sweetness in his mouth, and swallowed it. Amazarak’s parting gift, and curse.

Zaidu had just told him a half-lie.

‘And will you be ready, Sin Slayer?’ Vey pushed on, not pausing to address the untruth.

‘Yes,’ the lieutenant repeated. More vicious sharpening, more sweetness, a full lie this time. Vey could hear the pulse of Zaidu’s hearts – both of them active, just like his own – and see the individual beads of sweat as they ran from his bare, scarred brow. His fingers ached to grasp Kerubim.

‘You are lying,’ Vey told the lieutenant. ‘I can taste it.’

‘Your line of questioning is vague,’ Zaidu replied coldly, still lingering in the shadows, his half-skull mask grinning. ‘If you wish to get at the truth, hone it.’

Vey smiled coldly. That was more like the Daggan Zaidu he had known, ever since the desperate day he had dragged him through the blood and broken bones and burning meat of his own initiation rites. The unsheathed blade, cutting and quick. Sin Slayer, a champion of the Chapter, hunter of daemons, ruthless, relentless, uncompromising.

‘Caedus is your Never-brother,’ Vey said, attacking Zaidu head-on, just the way he liked it. ‘During your initiation into the Chapter, it was Caedus who possessed you. Who shared your flesh. Who, before my own eyes, you tore out and cast back into the warp.’

‘Clearly, I did not cast it far enough,’ Zaidu said, voice taking on a bitter edge. ‘How was it allowed to return and infest another aspirant so quickly?’

‘There will be an inquest into that,’ Vey assured him. ‘Right now, that is not my most pressing concern.’

‘Your most pressing concern is whether or not I will be an asset or a liability,’ Zaidu said with customary forwardness.

‘Correct. Even banished, the bond we share with our Never-brothers is potent. It affects us all in different ways. Now that Caedus is free, those effects will be even more pronounced. Tell me, why did you follow me here?’

‘It felt like something was calling to me,’ Zaidu said. ‘In my blood. And outside too. Not just the usual echoes but…’

‘Whispers,’ Vey said.

‘You have heard them too?’ Zaidu asked sharply.

‘I hear much, and see more, Sin Slayer,’ Vey said, falling back on the time-honoured mysticism of the Librarius. ‘Speak to me again of your vision. The one you experienced in the psykhanium. Was it the first occurrence since returning from Demeter?’

‘Yes. A warrior like us, Adeptus Astartes, clad in golden-yellow light, battles a Neverborn of the Blood God amidst towering ruins. The daemon is Caedus. The warrior defeats it and banishes it to a place beyond all human understanding.’

‘And you still believe this warrior is you?’ Vey asked.

‘It is a vision that has been shown to me and no other since my initiation,’ Zaidu said. ‘Sometimes I see it second-hand, but often I view the fight through the golden warrior’s own eyes. I have always known my purpose is to destroy Caedus in the material realm. The fact that it has come back to the Chapter and broken free, and the fact that I now stand ready to hunt it down, only confirms it. You know as well as I, Lie-Eater, that there are no such things as coincidences when it comes to the workings of the warp.’

‘True,’ Vey allowed, keeping his counsel about Zaidu’s vision to himself. ‘But you must know too that you will be tested on this hunt. And not merely your battle skill or your art with those daggers of yours. All of our Never-brothers detest us. Caedus will seek to twist the pieces it left behind in you, and break you in every conceivable way.’

‘The daemon will be the one who is broken. I will consign the Red Marshal to the warp so utterly that it can never again threaten the Emperor’s domains,’ Zaidu growled. ‘I will give you an Oath of Damnation on it, right here and now.’

‘I do not require that,’ Vey said, raising a hand to placate his younger brother. He had pushed him far enough, for now. ‘And in all honesty, there are none in the Chapter I would rather have at my side during an undertaking as vital as this. You have never been found wanting before, Sin Slayer, and neither have the Hexbreakers. I do not expect that will change.’

‘It will not,’ Zaidu agreed. ‘With your permission, Brother-Librarian, I will go and ready them.’

Vey dismissed Zaidu. Only when he was gone did the Librarian slam the Daemonarchia shut and lash chains of psi-deadened steel about it, snarling the necessary Oath of Binding as he felt it shudder in his grip, like a living beast brought to heel.

No such thing as coincidences. He could hear the clanging of a heavy bell from somewhere high above, its clapping the only sound from outside permitted within the Librarius. The eighth toll of the day, Vey realised. Expulsiars.

Time was still slipping through his fingers.

He hurried to the astropathic relay.

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* 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.