Contents

Cover

Written in Stars – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Written in Stars

Adrian Tchaikovsky

It was not the case that nobody expected great things of Irixi. That was not how the priesthood of the seraphon worked, nor the seraphon mind. Expectation was not their way. Events and individuals served their role in the plan of the Old Ones, from the lowest to the highest.

Had some emissary from a more individualistic culture been sufficiently gauche as to ask Starseer Acamatl which of his students would likely play the most significant role in furthering the devices of the Old Ones, however, he would likely not have named Irixi. Small Irixi, as Acamatl thought of his least-promising student. A runt out of the egg, diminutive even for a skink. Had he not shown some magical talent in the brood pools, he might well have been killed and devoured by his clutchmates, as the weakest sometimes were.

Dutiful was the best that could be said for Irixi, in Acamatl’s assessment. And dutiful was the absolute minimum virtue of any seraphon, of whatever breed or station. What was the use of anyone who was not committed to their particular duty? Acamatl was aware that, amongst less disciplined peoples, there was a sense of individual striving, to succeed beyond anticipated levels, to excel, to stand out from a crowd. Thus did the chief votaries of the Dark Powers see their path to outdo their fellows in excessive acts of ruin or sacrifice. Thus did crude orruks and their kindred breeds rise to become brutish chiefs, through personal acts of destruction. Thus even did lesser servants of Order achieve their places, by individual acts of heroism or cunning or initiative. A very untidy way of doing anything, Acamatl knew. To achieve more than one’s role required could be as disruptive as to fail, as the ripples of such unwarranted action spread out into the future! It was a wonder any part of the Old Ones’ design was ever achieved, with so many individuals charging around trying to do more than they were supposed to. The very thought made his crest flush with unhappy colours.

Up until this point in time, his student Irixi had been fit for minor duties. Ritual cleansings before important rites, preparation of robes and regalia, tending plants. Irixi’s deftness with plants had shown that he was destined for a quiet life tending the gardens of the Celestial Eye, and that had seemed entirely in balance with the requirements of the cosmos as far as Acamatl was any judge.

Acamatl had served within the Celestial Eye of Tepok for a long time, now. He was a pale, withered, august presence amongst the senior Starseers of the temple-ship. Others slept in the restorative pools for long aeons, but he was the primary interpreter of the desires of the mage-priest Sek’atta. There was no time for him to sleep, and so he had gradually worn out his strength in Sek’atta’s service. Soon, he would need to divine which of his students should take some of these responsibilities from his slender shoulders. There were a handful of likely candidates, and he had felt he had a good idea of where the universe would lead him when the time came to make a selection. Until now. Now, he found himself looking at Small Irixi with fresh and rather doubting eyes.

He had called his least-promising student to the meditation chamber of Sek’atta, somewhere Irixi had never seen the inside of before. Now the diminutive seer-in-training seemed even smaller – a spindly blue-green shape swamped in a formal robe that trailed down to the stone of the floor, his tail twitching and curling. Sek’atta’s sanctum was a pyramidal space within the heart of the Celestial Eye. In the centre, over a circular obsidian mirror, the mage-priest sat suspended in a floating stone throne, eyes closed in deep cogitation. On the sloping walls around him were fragments of recovered scripture, the woefully incomplete record of a prophecy the mage-priest had been restoring for centuries, through oracular visions and sending his servants out to uncover more pieces. One day the walls would be covered with a completed record of the divination, and Sek’atta would be able to give some single set of orders that might, perhaps, set a grand portion of the realms to rights. That the day in question must be centuries in the future did not daunt Sek’atta, nor Acamatl. What were those centuries for, save to give time for the restoration of the prophecy?

Irixi, draped in a plain robe and with a simple circlet sitting atop his head, crouched low, overawed. His crest kept rising and falling, dark blushes pulsing under his skin as his trepidation escaped him. Unseemly, and Acamatl was only glad that Sek’atta’s great eyes were closed so that the mage-priest could not be offended by his student’s fear.

A rumbling sigh issued from Sek’atta’s floating form. The great toad-shape stirred briefly, and both skinks held their breath in case he fully woke – a signifier of great and terrible events hanging in the balance in the Mortal Realms. But then he settled back down into slumber. His mouth sagged, and one of his attendants hopped forwards and fed a handful of bright beetles into his gaping maw. He swallowed without rousing further.

Another attendant poured out grains of white sand onto the mirror below his seat and ducked back. Acamatl watched the patterns they formed, as the sand swirled and danced into new configurations. Sek’atta slept, but in his dreaming he yet communicated his desires to his servants.

‘Do you see?’ Was it too much to hope, that Irixi could retain that much, even as anxiety clutched at him?

For a moment Acamatl’s student just swallowed convulsively, eyes wide. Then some vestige of propriety came over him and he hunched forwards, staring at the shifting patterns in the sand.

‘A journey,’ he noted. ‘The… regrettable necessity of contact with outsiders.’

Acamatl nodded. There was a subtle context there that Irixi had grasped. Not conflict – which, while not to be wished, was not regrettable in the same way – but contact. Always more difficult, fraught with the possibility of sullying oneself with the ways of less perfect creatures. ‘And?’

‘Celestial alignments,’ Irixi said slowly. ‘Oh, an observation!’ A little too loud in his relief at having understood, so that the echoes of his high voice struck discords from the walls. He ducked his head again, pained. ‘One must go amongst outsiders to take a reading of the stars, at a specified place and time.’ He looked up at Acamatl for approval.

‘As so often, you have omitted the key element of the instruction,’ Acamatl told him tiredly. ‘Every aspect of the whole must be considered, or error will creep in.’ He tapped his staff beside the mirror, where the sand still danced sluggishly. ‘An observation will not observe itself. Who, then, is fated to undertake this task?’

Irixi, who had fallen into the complacency of one who was merely being tested, read the signs formed by the sand again, and his skin paled.

‘Teacher, this is… beyond my station.’ Scared, because he had never left the Celestial Eye before. Scared because the task came direct from Sek’atta, therefore was more responsibility than Small Irixi had ever been asked to carry. Scared enough for the sort of nonsense talk Acamatl would not have expected from a hatchling fresh out of the egg.

‘If it were beyond your station,’ he said patiently, ‘then Sek’atta would not have revealed it as your destiny. Now, you have only a limited time before you must depart. Ensure your mind is open and receptive. It appears that you are destined to learn the speech of the humans.’

Click here to buy Written in Stars.

A Black Library Publication

This eBook edition published in 2024 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 Lucas Parolin.

Written in Stars © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2024. Written in Stars, 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: 978-1-83609-116-5

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
warhammer.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

the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

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.