Beyond the Pale (89 page)

Many people made the writing of this book possible, and they did so in many different ways. A novel grows out of who a writer is and has been. In that respect, this book is a result of all whose lives have touched me, great or small, over the years. No, I can’t possibly mention everyone who made me what I am—for good or for ill. However, I would like to mention those who made a special contribution to this work you are holding, and which—presumably—you have just read. This is their story as well. I am grateful to:

Carla Montgomery, for unwavering insight and inspiration.

Chris Brown, for support and understanding without conditions.

The members of the Central Colorado Writer’s Workshop, for criticism and camaraderie.

My mother and my siblings, for their love and companionship.

Anne Groell, my editor, for believing in this work enough to want to make it even better.

Shawna McCarthy, my agent, for being brave enough to agree to represent a book that was barely begun.

Danny Baror, my foreign rights agent, for helping to bring this book to new lands and new readers it would not otherwise have reached.

Enya and Loreena McKennitt, for the magic of their music, which kept my spirits and my fingers flying.

Most of all, I want to thank those who have given me the gift of reading this book, and who have made these worlds and their people their own. May we all learn to speak the rune of peace.

—Mark Anthony
Denver, Colorado
Midwinter’s Day, 1997

M
ARK
A
NTHONY
learned to love both books and mountains during childhood summers spent in a Colorado ghost town. Later he was trained as a paleoanthropologist but along the way grew interested in a different sort of human evolution—the symbolic progress reflected in myth and the literature of the fantastic. He undertook this project to explore the idea that reason and wonder need not exist in conflict. Fans of
The Last Rune
can visit the website at
http://www.thelastrune.com
.

Travis Wilder has returned from the otherworld of Eldh, hoping to settle back into his humdrum life in the mountains of contemporary Colorado. But he soon finds himself stalked by two shadowy organizations, each aware of his incredible journey and each determined to exploit it—whatever the cost to Travis … or to Eldh. Meanwhile, a terrifying new contagion is spreading like wildfire, a disease with no cure, which some are comparing to the Black Plague.

When the disease strikes his closest friend, Travis is drawn back to Eldh, where the same epidemic, known as the Burning Plague, is wreaking another kind of havoc. There, Travis and his former companion Grace Beckett—herself from Earth, but now living on Eldh—must solve the riddle of the plague. Where did it come from? What is it’s purpose? And how can it possibly be stopped … before it completely destroys two coexisting worlds: ancient Eldh and modern Earth.

Available from Bantam Spectra