Beyond the Pale (The Last Rune, Book 1) - Softcover

Anthony, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553379550 ISBN 13: 9780553379556

Publisher: Spectra, 1998

Synopsis

Reality is unraveling in the dusty Colorado town of Castle City.  Strange symbols are carved into storefronts, and ancient legends come to life.  

Saloonkeeper Travis Wilder is handed an ornate iron box and a mysterious mission.  And in Denver, where dead men walk, ER doctor Grace Beckett is witness to a terrifying and inhuman scene of carnage.  Theirs is a destiny shrouded in a coming darkness, a destiny that draws them into the otherworld of Eldh....  

Eldh is a land of gods and monsters, myths and runecraft, conspiracy and blood.  It is a world that has secretly coexisted beside ours for millennia.  But now the boundary between worlds is crumbling in the face of a monstrous evil.  And Travis and Grace must save this strange land in order to safeguard their own world.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

nraveling in the dusty Colorado town of Castle City.  Strange symbols are carved into storefronts, and ancient legends come to life.  <br><br>Saloonkeeper Travis Wilder is handed an ornate iron box and a mysterious mission.  And in Denver, where dead men walk, ER doctor Grace Beckett is witness to a terrifying and inhuman scene of carnage.  Theirs is a destiny shrouded in a coming darkness, a destiny that draws them into the otherworld of Eldh....  <br><br>Eldh is a land of gods and monsters, myths and runecraft, conspiracy and blood.  It is a world that has secretly coexisted beside ours for millennia.  But now the boundary between worlds is crumbling in the face of a monstrous evil.  And Travis and Grace must save this strange land in order to safeguard their own world.

Reviews

Launching a new fantasy series, Anthony, an erstwhile Forgotten Realms author (Curse of the Shadowmage, etc.), makes use of the classic premise of humans from our mundane world transported to a fantasy milieu; in this case, the travelers are two Coloradans, bartender Travis Wilder and ER physician Grace Beckett. The pair are not wholly surprised at their journey, as the world of Eldh has made several bloody visitations to Colorado already, but the reality of Eldh, full of political intrigues, is still terrifying, despite the protagonists' ability to work magic there. Anthony's pacing is spotty, frequently slow?there is just not enough matter here to justify the sheer mass of words. His characterizations are also uneven, sometimes exceedingly original and moving, other times relying on simplistic fantasy archetypes. He lays down exceptionally exciting action scenes, however, particularly those set in Colorado, as when Travis must escape an onslaught of fierce creatures from Eldh. This novel is only a so-so series kickoff, but if Anthony pumps up the pace and writes to his strengths in future volumes, the series could gain many a fan. Agent, Shawna McCarthy (Danny Baror for foreign rights).
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Mysterious runes appear scratched into doors all over Castle City, Colorado, just before the equally mysterious Jack Graystone summons his friend, bar owner Travis Wilder. Jack gives Travis an iron box, and somehow inscribes a rune on his palm before falling beneath the onslaught of a horde of unearthly creatures. Travis escapes and, pursued by the creatures, falls through a magic billboard into another world. Meanwhile, ER doctor Grace Beckett treats a gunshot victim who turns out to have an iron heart; he doesn't stay dead, either. And soon Grace too falls into the world of Eldh. She's rescued from the snow by a knight, Durge, and taken to Castle Calavere. The inhabitants think she's a fairy princess, while their king, Boreas, puts her to work winnowing the castle's many intrigues and conspiracies. She also develops witchcraft, or Weirding, abilities. Later, Travis and companions show up. Somehow, Jack has given Travis the capacity to work rune magic; the stone in the iron box is a magical Great Stone. The evil-rune Raven Cult are attempting to free the Pale King, imprisoned in Imbrifale behind the Rune Gate. Travis must master the rune magic in order to lock and secure the Gate, while Grace's Weirding talents keep a lid on the troubles within the castle. Intermittently intriguing and gripping, with frequent plot wobbles and irritatingly dysfunctional leading characters: imagine a Robert Jordan/Stephen R. Donaldson hybrid and youll get the idea. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A COMING DARKNESS

1.
Sometimes the wind blowing down from the mountains made Travis Wilder  feel like anything could happen.

He could always hear it coming, long before the first telltale wisps of  snow-clean air touched his face. It would begin as a distant roar far up  the canyon, nearly and yet not at all like the ancient voice of a  stormswept ocean. Before long he could see it, rushing in wave after wave  through the forest that mantled the granite-boned ranges that encircled  the valley. Lodgepole pines swayed in graceful rhythm, while cloudlike  aspen shivered green, then silver, then green again. Moments later, in  abandoned fields just outside of town, he could hear the witchgrass  rattle a final portent as it whirled around in wild pagan circles.

Then the wind would strike.

It would race down Elk Street--Castle City's broad main avenue--like an  invisible ghost-herd of Indian ponies. Past McKay's General Store. Past  the Mosquito Café. Past the abandoned assay office, the Mine Shaft  Saloon, the Blue Summit Earth Shop, and the faded Victorian opera house.  Dogs would bark and snap at passing newspaper tumbleweeds. Strolling  tourists would turn their backs and shut their eyes to dust devils that  glittered with gum wrappers and cigarette-pack cellophane. Dude-ranch  cowboys would hold on to black hats with turquoise-ringed hands while  their dusters flew out behind them like rawhide wings.

Maybe he was the only one in town crazy enough, but Travis loved the  wind. He always had. He would step outside the buckshot-speckled door of  the Mine Shaft Saloon, which he had the dubious distinction of owning  these days, and lean over the boardwalk rail to face the gale full-on.  There was no way to know from where the wind had journeyed, he reasoned,  or just what it might blow his way. He would breathe the quickening air,  sharp with the scents of cold mountain stone and sun-warmed pine, and  wonder whose lungs it had filled last--where they lived, what language  they spoke, what gods they courted, if they courted any at all, and what  dreams they dared dream behind eyes of a hundred different shapes and  hues.

It was a feeling that had first struck him the day he stepped off a  mud-spattered bus--a flatland kid raised between the straight and hazy  horizons of Illinois--and drank in his virgin sight of Castle City. In  the seven years since, the sensation had come to him with surprising and  comforting regularity, never lessening in potency with time. Facing into  the wind always left him with an ache of wordless longing in his chest,  and a feeling that he didn't have to choose between anything, because  everything was possible.

Still, despite his many musings, there was no way Travis could have  imagined, on a chill evening caught in the gray time between the  gold-and-azure days of fall and the frozen purple of winter night, just  exactly what the wind would blow into Castle City, and into his life.  Later, looking back with the empty clarity of hindsight, he would sift  through all the strange and unexpected events to pinpoint the precise  moment when things began to change. It had been a small happening, so  small that he might not have remembered it had it not been for the fact  that afterward things would never--could never--be the same again.

It was when he heard bells.


2.
Afternoon sunlight fell as heavy as gold into the mountain valley as  Travis Wilder piloted his battered pickup truck toward town. Faint music  crackled on the AM radio in time to the squawking dashboard. A paper air  freshener shaped like a pine tree bobbed on a string beneath the rearview  mirror, all the fake pine smell long since baked out of it by years of  the high-altitude sun. The engine growled as he downshifted and swung  around a curve at precisely twice the speed recommended by a nearby road  sign: a yellow diamond so full of shotgun holes it looked like a chunk of  Swiss cheese.

"You're late, Travis," he said to himself.

He had spent most of the afternoon on the roof of the ramshackle hunting  lodge he called home, nailing on tar paper and replacing shingles torn  off by last night's windstorm. It was past time to be getting ready for  the snow that the fat, red-furred marmots foreshadowed. When he finally  thought to look up, the sun had been sinking toward the wall of mountains  that ringed the valley. Travis never had been good with time. But then,  he never had been good with a lot of things. That was why he had come  here, to Castle City.

The regulars would start straggling into the Mine Shaft Saloon by  sundown, and there were usually a few hapless tourists who had taken a  wrong turn off the highway and had ended up in Castle City by accident.  Legions of them cruised the twisting two-lanes this time of year, to ogle  the gold splendor of the mountain autumn from the heated comfort of their  rental cars. To make matters worse, Moira Larson's book club was meeting  in the back room of the saloon that evening. The topic:  Nineteenth-Century French Novels of Adultery. Travis shuddered at the  thought of facing a dozen book lovers thwarted in their hell-bent desire  to discuss implications of class structure in Flaubert's Madame  Bovary.

A nervous whistle escaped his lips. "You are really, really  late."

Of course, Max would be at the saloon.

Max Bayfield was Travis's one and only employee. Max was supposed to be  working the day shift today, although more likely he was poring over the  saloon's books, trying to find money between the lines. Travis supposed  that was what he got for hiring a refugee accountant from New York, but  at least there would be someone there to pour a drink if a customer  asked. Then again, it wasn't really a great idea to let Max wrangle the  bar on his own during busy hours. Travis could only hope Max wasn't  hovering around the jukebox again, telling customers that while listening  to classical music temporarily raised one's IQ, country-western  songs--with their simplistic melodic structure and repetitive rhythmic  schemes--did just the opposite.

His sense of urgency redoubled, Travis punched the accelerator, and the  truck flew out of the curve like a rock out of a slingshot.

He was about a mile from town when a dilapidated shape flashed past the  truck's cracked windshield. Hulking beside the road were the remains of a  house. Although he had passed it countless times, like always, Travis  found his gaze drawn toward the ruin. The old place had burned years ago,  long before he had come to Castle City, yet somehow he knew that even  before it caught fire, this had been an ugly building. It was squat and  sprawling, with rows of small windows that stared like hateful eyes at  the beauty of the mountains. Now the structure was nothing more than a  shell, the husk of some gigantic beetle that had died next to the  road.

According to the stories Travis had heard, the house had been an  orphanage once. Built during the days of the Great Depression, the  Beckett-Strange Home for Children had endured for decades as one of the  largest orphanages in central Colorado, but about twenty years ago the  place had burned. By then orphanages were well out of fashion, and the  Home was never rebuilt. Travis couldn't say he was sorry. There was  something . . . wrong about the ruin. He wasn't sure what it was,  but often when he passed it he found himself thinking dark thoughts.  Thoughts about fear, or suffering, or mayhem. Maybe it was just that he  knew people had died in that fire. Not any of the children--they had all  escaped--but several of the Home's workers had been trapped in their  rooms, and they had all been burned alive. At least, that was what the  rumors told. Travis didn't know if the stories were true, but if there  was ever a place for ghosts, it was the remains of the Beckett-Strange  Home for Children.

The old orphanage slipped out of view, and Travis fixed his gaze on the  road ahead. This was the time of day when deer were inexplicably  compelled to leap out and fling their bodies in front of moving cars. He  kept his eyes peeled. Except a moment later something caught his  attention, and it wasn't a deer. He downshifted, his hurry forgotten.  Gears rattling in protest, the pickup slowed to a crawl.

It was a billboard.

Tires ground on gravel, and the truck rolled to a halt on the shoulder  of the road. Travis peered out the driver's side window. Like so many  wooden artifacts in the high country, the billboard was bleached and  splintering but curiously intact. The thing had to have seen a good sixty  or seventy mountain winters in its existence, and even the most recent  advertisement plastered across its face was long faded. However, he could  still make out the ghostly shapes of people wearing clothes that had been  fashionable two decades ago, laughing as th...

Edition details

• Publisher: Spectra
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0553379550
• ISBN 13: 9780553379556
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544