Side By Side Fun: UK & (New) US Covers — “The Gathering Of The Lost”
Just for fun I’m running The Wall Of Night series covers side by side this week — with an extract from each book for added awesome. 😉
The Heir of Night was up Monday and Daughter Of Blood is forthcoming on Friday — but today is The Gathering Of The Lost’s turn to star:
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In The Cavern Of Sleepers
“Malian’s dream was darkness: blackness without stars, water without light, a tower without a shadow that she remembered climbing—but that too fell away as she plummeted, diving head first through the dream. She kept her eyes open, remembering the crow in the shadow tower, the one that had told her this was something she would need to learn how to do.
The crow had been right, Malian thought, not that it helped when the universe of her dream was devoid of light.
“It is not the eyes.” The voice of Nhenir, the legendary helm that had once belonged to Yorindesarinen, the greatest of all Derai heroes, was a mixture of light and dark, speaking into Malian’s mind. “Your inner awareness must be open: you must learn to eat the dark lest it eat you.”
Malian did not answer as she plunged deeper, and then deeper again into the well of her dream. Mind, heart and soul, she felt as if she were made of darkness—but was that not fitting since her name was Night?
She was far, far down in the dream before she saw light, a single star drowned at the bottom of the well. She turned toward it and the light grew, finally becoming a torch that gleamed white in a crystal bracket. Malian caught at it with her mind and stepped forward—into the center of an enormous cave that was ringed with more torches.
The cave was so vast that both its roof and the light were lost in the darkness overhead. But the space surrounding Malian was not empty: thousands of warriors lay all around her on stone biers. All were armed, but their helms and weapons, like their companion beasts—horses, hounds, and even the occasional hawk—were disposed around them. They looked exactly, Malian thought, like the depictions of legendary heroes in ancient sepulchres. Yet these warriors were alive: she could see the steady rise and fall of their breath.
“Asleep,” Malian whispered, “they’re all asleep.” “
~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two