UK/AUS/NZ cover

US cover

Only three days now until The Gathering of the Lost is finally here so I thought I’d add in another excerpt. But first I’d like to particularly mention SFFANZ stalwart and avid FSF reader, Jan Butterworth, who texted me last night that she was in hospital getting her ” … heart checked out so couldn’t email or comment on blog”  but that she was “still counting down 2 Gathering.”

For those of you who may not know, Jan was also the reader who won the contest when The Heir of Night was released to give her name to a character in The Gathering of the Lost. This means that Jan also gets a mention in the Acknowledgments and will get a personalised copy of the book as soon as I have my author copies. And there is indeed a character called Jan Butterworth in The Gathering of the Lost!

Unfortunately I can’t make today’s excerpt about that Jan Butterworth character because it could be a bit too spoiler-y, but I would like to to send lots of positive thoughts Jan’s way—and both hope that heart checks out A-OK, Jan, and you enjoy this excerpt from the book.

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from The Gathering of the Lost

(c)  Helen Lowe

Chapter 7, Across the River

The approaching clip of horses’ hooves was muffled by the thick fog that looped across the road and into the trees. There was a flat, eerie quality to the half-lit world, as though the forest itself held its breath. The heralds, too, waited, pressed low beneath arching fern. Above their heads a bird called, heralding the day. Another answered it, deeper in the woods, and a moment later a great clamor of birdsong filled the forest, just as the first of the riders emerged through the fog.

The heralds saw the horse’s head first, splitting the white air, its ears forward and nostrils flared. A second later the spiked helmet of its rider appeared, turning slowly in a sweep of road and wood. The visor was lowered, concealing the rider’s face, and the horse too was armored, its breath curling through the metal chanfron as it walked forward. Together, horse and rider looked like some beast of ancient legend—or something altogether stranger, a shape of night itself emerging from the mist.

The rider stopped on the crown of the road and five others materialized out of the whiteness to join him. The heavy armor of both horses and riders clanked beneath the birdsong and their breath steamed on the air. The dark, secret visors turned, peering between the trees, but they did not penetrate the heralds’ hiding place. After a few minutes the riders moved on, breasting the mist and half-light beneath the canopy. One by one, just as they had first appeared, they disappeared, while the heralds waited, motionless.

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And if you would like to read the first 100 hundred pages of the book in sequence , rather than my excerpts taken from ‘all over the place’ (although I rather think that’s fun, too!), you can now do so here.

Haven’t read The Heir of Night yet? Then you can check out an excerpt here.