Ulrich refilled his mug from the teapot and nodded. "As his did of you Valdemarans, I expect."
Rubrik chuckled. "I won't say we became the greatest of friends, but we got along just fine after that. He did express a great deal of surprise that a White Demon would take a life-threatening injury to save him, and that the Hellhorse would then proceed to guard both of us."
Karal paled a bit. White Demon? Hellhorse? Rubrik?
Ulrich grinned broadly. "I daresay. Perhaps some good came out of the bad, then—"
"I just wish it hadn't happened to me." Rubrik sighed. "Ah well, the life of a Herald is not supposed to be an easy one. I could count myself lucky that the ax went a bit to the left. To end the story, that's why I'm your escort, and not someone like—oh, Lady Elspeth. I was impressed enough with the way that stiffnecked youngster turned around, and with the Healer-Priest that helped me, that I specifically requested assignment to any missions dealing with Sun-Priests. I wanted whoever met you two to be someone who would at least treat you like human beings."
Herald! White Demon! Hellhorse! Oh, glorious God—
Rubrik was a Herald. A White Demon. And that beautiful horse that Karal had admired so much was no horse at all.
He stared into the fire, stunned, quite unable to move. It was a good thing he wasn't holding anything, or he'd have dropped it, his hands were so numb. He didn't even realize that Rubrik had excused himself and gone back to the inn for something, until the door closed behind him.
"Child, you look as if someone smacked you with a board," Ulrich observed dispassionately. "Are you all right?"
Karal rose to his feet, somewhat unsteadily, and stared at his mentor, trembling from head to foot in mingled shock and fear. "Didn't you hear what he said?" Karal spluttered. "He's one of them! Demonspawn! The—"
"I know, I know," Ulrich replied, with a yawn. "I've known all along. If that 'here I am, shoot me now,' white livery of theirs wasn't a dead giveaway, the Companion certainly is."
"But you didn't say anything!" Karal wailed, feeling as if he'd been betrayed.
"I thought you knew," Ulrich told him, a hint of stern rebuke in his voice. "We are in Valdemar. We are envoys from Her Holiness. The Heralds are the most important representatives of their Queen, and the only ones she trusts fully to accomplish delicate tasks. We've always called them White Demons. It should have been logical."
Karal just stared at him.
"Then again," Ulrich said, after a moment of thought, "I apologize. I should have told you, you're correct. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised that you didn't recognize our friend for what he is—you've only had those ridiculous descriptions in the Chronicles to go on. I should have said something."
"But—" Karal began, wildly. "He—"
"—is the same man he was a few moments ago, before you realized what his position in Valdemar was," Ulrich pointed out, sipping his tea. "He is still the same. You are still the same. The only thing that has changed is how you see him, which is not accurate."
Karal tried to get a breath and couldn't. "But—"
"Does he eat babies for breakfast?" Ulrich asked, with a hint of a grim smile.
Karal was forced to shake his head. "No, but—"
"Do he or his mount shoot fire from their nostrils, or leave smoking, blackened footprints behind them?" Ulrich was definitely enjoying this.
Karal wasn't. "No, but—"
"Has he been anything other than kind and courteous to either of us?" Ulrich continued inexorably.
"No," Karal replied weakly. "But—" He sat back down in his chair with a thud. "I don't understand—"
Ulrich picked up Karal's tea mug and leaned over to put it back in his hands. "Child," he said softly, "he has heard the same stories of us that we have heard of the Heralds. The trouble is—I fear that the stories about us were partly true. We did have the Fires of Cleansing. We did summon demons to do terrible things, often to people who were innocent of wrongdoing. And yet he has the greatness of heart to assume that you and I, personally, never did any such things. What does that say to you?"
"That—he's the same man whose company I enjoyed this morning," Karal finally said, with a little difficulty. His mind felt thick. His thoughts moved as though they were weighted. And yet he could not deny the truth of what Ulrich had just said.
"I suggest that you relax and continue to enjoy his company," Ulrich replied, leaning back in his chair. "I certainly am, and I intend to go on doing so. In fact, after hearing his story, I am inclined to trust him to live up to every good thing that Her Holiness told me about Heralds."
But— Karal's thought froze right there, and he clasped his mug and stared down into the steaming tea as if he would somehow find his answers there. Ulrich was right; nothing had changed except for the single word.
Herald. Not such a terrible word. Just a word, after all. A name—and Karal had, in his own time, been called plenty of names.
That never made me into anything that they called me.
Yes, well, the word "Herald" in and of itself was nothing terrible either. What word really was?
Ulrich was right about the rest of it, too. He had never seen a Hellsp—
A Herald.
Right. He had never seen a Herald in all his life. The descriptions in the Chronicles were infantile, really—composed of all the horrors mothers used to frighten little children into obedience, rolled into one and put into a white shroud. Not a neat uniform, a livery like Rubrik's, but a tattered, ichor-dripping shroud of death. And no matter what other things he'd learned that had been wrong about their former enemies, somehow he had still expected Heralds to be monsters.
If you want to make your enemy into something you can hate, you first remove his humanity.... Had Ulrich said that at one point, or had that been something he'd heard during one of Solaris' speeches? It was true, whoever had said it, and the Chronicles had certainly tried to remove all vestige of humanity from these Heralds. Make them only icons. When they are seen as a type, and not as individuals, they are easy for a fanatical mind to grasp—and hate.