Beyond the Pale

by Mark Anthony

  Brother Cy gave an absent nod, as if he already knew this fact, or did not care. His eyes flickered past her to take in the brittle shell of the orphanage. “The past lies dark and heavy on this place. Can you feel it?”

  “Yes,” she said after a moment, for she could.

  He brushed bony fingers against scorched clapboards. “Even fire and time cannot make the wood forget. Not entirely. The memory of evil lingers in the grain.”

  Grace crossed her arms over her chest. How could they know so much? Both of them—this weird caricature of a preacher, and the ethereal, porcelain-doll girl.

  She whispered it again, desperate now. “Who are you?”

  A grin, both terrible and impish, split Brother Cy’s visage. “We are what we are and have always been. We go where the winds of chance blow us, and do what our natures require. But then, who is anyone, child?”

  It was testament to Grace’s odd frame of mind, and the disconnection she felt from all that she had once thought of as real, that his words almost made sense. She turned her back to him and gazed once more upon the orphanage. “Can we never be free of the past then?”

  “No, child,” Brother Cy said from behind her. “We cannot shape the past, for it is the past that shapes us, and without it we would be as dim shadows, lacking form or substance.” There was a long pause. Then, “You cannot shape the past, and the future is beyond our reach, but remember this, child: You do possess the power to shape your present.”

  Grace searched the blistered slab of the orphanage’s door. What would she glimpse if she were to open it? Would she see clumps of dry thistles nestled among burnt timbers, scattering downy seeds like fine ash? Or would she see a small girl, shivering in a torn nightgown in a corner? Present or past? She didn’t know.

  “Then find out,” came Brother Cy’s raspy whisper. “Open the door, and see what lies beyond. Only then will you know.”

  “I can’t,” she said in dread, even as a queer compulsion blossomed in her chest. Yes. Why had she come to this place if not to open the door?

  She felt something small and cool being pressed into her hand. Her fingers closed around the object.

  “It is merely a token,” Brother Cy said. “Yet in it there may reside some small reservoir of strength. And by it, perhaps, you will better remember my words.” The preacher’s whisper grew faint, as if he receded into a far distance. “Open the door, child. What you see beyond is up to you.…”

  The preacher’s words melded into the night wind, and Grace knew she was alone. Step by step she approached the door of the orphanage. Her heart fluttered at this strange homecoming she had never imagined. The scarred door stood before her. She reached out and closed her hand around the tarnished knob, almost surprised to find it cold against her skin rather than molten with fire. For a second she held her breath. Then she turned the knob. With a creak, the door swung open before her.

  At first she saw only darkness, and she was afraid maybe that was all there was left for her. Then something cold and damp touched her face. A moment later another chill, feathery caress brushed against her cheek, followed by another, and another. Then she saw them in the glow of the headlights. Tiny flecks of white danced on the air and settled on her arms, her hands, her hair. It was snow. Pure, white, beautiful snow. It swirled out of the door in a glittering cloud to surround her.

  After all the day’s happenings it was, at last, too much. She reeled. The snow cast a veil before her eyes, and a rushing noise filled her ears. Past was forgotten. Present was forgotten as well. There was no light, nor was there darkness. There was only snow. A soft sigh escaped her lips and fogged on the icy air. Only dully did she hear a sound like a door shutting behind her.

  Then Grace fell forward and sank into cold and perfect whiteness.

  20.

  Hadrian Farr turned away from the burned-out building and raised a hand to shield his face against gritty wind. The black helicopter lifted off the stretch of two-lane highway and rose over the abandoned structure, into the hard blue sky. From inside the plastic bubble the pilot saluted in farewell. Then, like an onyx insect, the helicopter sped away and disappeared behind the mountains that bounded the valley. The morning air fell still.

  Hadrian lowered his hand and walked back to the sedan parked before the ruin—once an orphanage, according to the remnants of a sign he had stumbled upon. He had traded his suit of last night for wool pants and a fisherman’s sweater. He reached through the car window, opened the glove compartment, and switched off the transmitter inside. They had picked up the signal just after dawn, but the moment they landed Hadrian had known they were already too late. Although obscured by the cloven hooves of a wandering deer, he had been able to follow Dr. Beckett’s footprints to the door of the structure. There her trail had ended. He had searched within the orphanage and found nothing but thistles and charred timber. It was as if she had vanished. However, Hadrian knew well people did not simply vanish. They always went … somewhere.

  He pulled a small cellular phone from his pocket, pushed a button, and held the phone to his ear. A polite voice answered.

  “I’ve located the car,” Hadrian said without preamble.

  The voice asked a dispassionate question.

  He shook his head. “No, there’s no sign of the subject. Nor do I expect to find any.” He drew in a deep breath before speaking the words. “I believe we have a Class One on our hands.”

  The voice on the other end paused, then spoke again in careful tones.

  “Yes, you heard me correctly.” An edge of annoyance crept into Hadrian’s voice. “That’s a Class One encounter. Extraworldly translocation.”

  There was a long moment of silence. When the voice resumed, a note of excitement had broken through the formal veneer.

  Hadrian nodded. “Yes. And send an observation team out here immediately. There may be residual signs—energy signatures or compound residues—I can’t detect on my own.”

  The voice acknowledged his words. Hadrian pressed a button and slipped the phone back into his pocket. He gazed around. Dry grass danced under the lonely mountain sky. It was beautiful. He almost wished he could stay here, but there was work to do. He was to return to the charterhouse in London at once, to make a full report. Efforts to locate the ironheart known as Detective Janson had failed. However, last night, his operatives had managed to acquire the corpse of the ironheart from the morgue at Denver Memorial Hospital, and he had the photos he had taken of Grace Beckett’s necklace. Together, it would be enough to make his case for Class One determination. It would mean a great victory for him, perhaps even advancement. Class Three encounters—rumors of extraworldly beings—were common. And while rare, Class Two encounters—meetings with those who had interacted with extraworldly forces—were well documented. But in the entire five-hundred-year history of the Seekers, there had been no more than a dozen Class One encounters: direct contact with an extraworldly traveler.

  Hadrian sighed on the cool air. A mixture of emotions filled him. Excitement at having made so great a discovery. Concern for Grace Beckett, who was now far beyond his reach. And strange envy as well, to think she was almost certainly now experiencing that which he had always dreamed of. A Class Zero encounter—translocation to another world oneself.

  He laughed at himself and shook his head. Hadn’t he found what most Seekers spent their entire lives searching for? Evidence of worlds other than this Earth? He climbed into the car and turned the key.

  He pulled the sedan around, then paused by the highway to let a splotchy white school bus pass. Inside, the shadowy figure of the bus’s driver waved in thanks. Hadrian waved back, and the dilapidated vehicle roared by. He pulled onto the highway, then piloted the sedan in the opposite direction. A few moments later something caught his eye. Beside the road was a billboard. Its blank surface was covered with a fresh coat of primer-gray paint, ready for a new picture. Empty paint cans lay scattered in the grass before it. For a moment Hadrian imagined his life lik
e that billboard: fresh, clean, ready to be worked anew. Maybe that was what it felt like to journey to another world.

  A smile touched his lips. “Good luck, Dr. Beckett,” he whispered.

  Engine purring, the sedan sped down the highway and left the blank billboard behind.

  21.

  Travis blinked.

  The first thing he noticed was that he stood in a forest. The second thing he noticed was that misty light filtered its way between the pale trees all around. He adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles before wide gray eyes. A moment ago the world had been cloaked in the dark of night. Now it was nearly dawn, and snow dusted the frozen ground. But how?

  It was hard to think. He drew in a deep breath and tried to clear the buzzing from his head. The forest air was cold and moist, redolent with the tastes of ice and pine. He could not remember a time when he had breathed air this good. For a moment he almost believed these were the woods north of town. Almost. Except, now that he looked at them more closely, the trees he had taken for aspens didn’t seem quite right. They looked like aspen trees should—but they were all a little too tall, their branches spread a little too wide, and their papery bark was a little too silver. And while the occasional conifer scattered among them was as tall and straight as a lodgepole pine, he didn’t remember that lodgepoles had that purplish tinge to their needles. Where was this place? Then the fog in his mind cleared and he remembered everything. The revival, the words of Brother Cy, the beings in the light, and last of all the …

  He spun around and expected to see it hovering there, like a window looking out over the moonlit highway that meandered north of Castle City. The billboard. However, there was no floating window behind him, no crisscrossed timbers of a billboard’s back side, nor was there a highway anywhere in sight. He stumbled forward and searched desperately to either side. His walk became a jog, then a headlong run through the forest. Branches whipped at his face, he batted them aside. It had to be here. Yet all he saw were unfamiliar trees that stretched bare limbs toward the sky.

  Wherever this place was, it was not Colorado.

  At last Travis halted and gasped for breath. His head spun. The air was too sharp, too thin, like that on a high mountain summit. He gripped the trunk of an aspen—or whatever sort of tree it was—to keep from reeling.

  “Well now, I had not expected to have company for breakfast,” said a deep voice behind him. “But then, company is the best sort of surprise, isn’t it? Especially in a place as lonely as this. Won’t you join me?”

  Travis turned around in astonishment.

  The speaker sat on the ground a half-dozen paces away, cross-legged before a campfire. He was a man of indeterminate years, although he was more likely older than younger, for his dark, shoulder-length hair was shot with gray, and lines accentuated a strong mouth and eyes the exact faded blue of the wintry sky above. The man was dressed in curious fashion. He wore a long shirt of heather-gray wool, belted at the waist with a broad strip of leather, and a kind of tight, fawn-colored trousers. Leather boots shod the man’s feet, and gathered around his shoulders to ward off the chill was a cloak the color of deep water. The cloak was fastened at his throat with an ornate silver brooch.

  In all, the man reminded Travis of the actors from the local medieval festival that was held each summer a few miles down the highway from Castle City. The festival workers often wandered into the Mine Shaft after the fair closed for the night, to have a drink at the bar or shoot some pool, still clad in their anachronistic costumes, posing as noblemen, ladies, knights, and thieves. However, there was something about the man’s clothes that made Travis think they were not part of a costume. They seemed too well worn, too travel-stained, too … real.

  Travis’s dizziness was replaced by alarm. If the billboard really had taken him somewhere else—somewhere far enough away to have strange trees—then there was no telling who he might meet. He eyed the man in suspicion. He could be a criminal, a fugitive, maybe even a murderer.

  The stranger grinned, as if he read Travis’s thoughts. His voice was like the sound of a horn. “You need not worry, friend. I am almost certainly the least dangerous thing you will encounter in these woods.” He gestured to the fire. “You’re cold. You should sit and warm yourself awhile. What could be the harm in that?”

  After everything that had happened, Travis could think of plenty of possibilities. However, despite his sheepskin coat, he was cold. His hands ached, and his feet were blocks of ice in his boots. He decided it was better to fall in with an outlaw than freeze to death, so he approached the fire and sat on a cushion of pine needles. He held his hands over the flames and soaked in the warmth. Without further words, the stranger picked up a wooden spoon and stirred the contents of a pot balanced over the fire on a tripod of green sticks. The man filled two wooden bowls with thick stew and handed one to Travis along with another spoon.

  “Thank you,” Travis managed to stammer.

  The stranger simply nodded and began to eat. Travis hesitated, then tentatively tasted the stew. A moment later he was wolfing down the food, heedless of the way it scorched his tongue. It was delicious—seasoned with an herb he had never tasted before—and after the first bite his stomach had reminded him he had not eaten since lunch the day before.

  At last he sighed and set down the bowl. Warmth crept through his body. After a moment he realized the stranger was watching him. No, studying him. Travis shifted on the ground. There was something peculiar about the man’s keen blue eyes. They seemed too old for the rest of his face.

  The stranger winked, and his gaze was no longer so piercing. “Do not fear, friend. My eyes are not as sharp as some, and if I have seen anything at all in you, then it is neither shadowed nor wicked. Friend I call you, and so you will be considered, at least by me.”

  He gathered up the bowls and spoons, wiped them clean with a handful of pine needles, and placed them inside the pot. He stowed the cooking gear in a small pack, then turned his attention back to Travis. “Well then, it is against all laws of hospitality to ply a guest with questions when his stomach is empty. Yet now we have had our breakfast, and I think the time has come for introductions.”

  Travis started to speak, but the stranger held up a hand to silence him.

  “Hold, friend,” he said. “One cannot make proper introductions without a hot cup of maddok. This may not be a civilized land these days, but that does not mean we have to act as barbarians.”

  Travis bit his tongue. Something told him the stranger was not accustomed to contradiction. The man pulled a tin kettle out of the coals and poured dark liquid into two clay cups. As he did this, Travis noticed he wore a black leather glove on his right hand, while his left hand was bare. It seemed a curious affectation, but there was much about the stranger Travis found curious.

  Travis accepted one of the cups and gazed into it. He had never heard of maddok, but it looked suspiciously like coffee to him. He raised the cup and took a sip. Instantly he knew maddok was not coffee. It was more bitter, although not unpleasantly so, and richer as well, with a nutty flavor. Almost immediately Travis detected a tingling in his stomach. He shook his head, wide-awake as if he had just had a full night’s sleep. He stared at the cup, then downed the rest of the hot liquid.

  The stranger laughed, raised his own cup, and drank deeply. Then he spoke in a formal tone. “My name is Falken. Falken of Malachor. I am a bard, by right and by trade.”

  Travis took a breath, it was his turn. “My name is Travis Wilder.” Somehow it didn’t sound quite as interesting as the stranger’s introduction. He searched for something to add. “I don’t know that I’m anything by right, but I’m a saloon owner by purchase.”

  “A saloon?” Falken asked with a frown.

  Travis nodded. “That’s right—a saloon. You know, it’s like a bar.” By his expression, Falken evidently did not know. Travis kept on trying. “A pub? A tavern?”

  Understanding flickered across Falken’s face. “Of course, you
are a tavern keeper. An old and honorable profession, at least in this land.”

  Travis just shrugged, although inwardly he felt a note of pride. He had never thought about anything he did as being honorable before.

  Falken set down his cup. “Then again, something tells me you are not from these parts.”

  Travis scratched his chin. “I’m not quite sure.” A question rose to his lips. It was utterly mad, but he had to ask it. “Just where are these parts exactly?”

  To his surprise, Falken did not laugh. Instead, the bard regarded Travis with grave eyes, then spoke in measured words. “At the moment we are deep in the Winter Wood, a vast and ancient forest which lies many leagues north of the Dominion of Eredane.”

  Travis shivered at the sound of the strange names. “The Dominion of Eredane?”

  Falken leaned forward, his expression suddenly one of sharp interest. “That is correct. Eredane is one of the seven Dominions which lie in the north of the continent of Falengarth.”

  Travis gave a jerky nod, as if this made sense, when it made nothing of the sort. “I see.” He searched for a way to phrase his next question that would not sound utterly absurd. It was no use. He asked it anyway, doing his best to sound nonchalant. “And the world we’re talking about here is …?” His question trailed off on the cold air. He was suddenly freezing again.

  Falken raised a dark eyebrow. “Why, the world Eldh, of course.”

  The words struck Travis like a clap of thunder. He had not stepped through the billboard to another place, but to another world. The world Sister Mirrim had spoken of at the revival. There was no other explanation. The strange trees, the unfamiliar air, Falken’s odd clothes. As impossible as it seemed, it was the only answer that made sense.

  This was not his Earth.

  With this knowledge came a new, terrible thought, and a wave of panic crashed through him. There was no sign of the billboard on this side, no window that looked out over Castle City.