Ulrich had turned the tables on their escort, and was asking personal questions of him. Rubrik didn't seem at all reluctant to answer them now, although he had not been so forthcoming before this. Perhaps he had decided that not only was Ulrich worthy of trust as an envoy, he was to be trusted with other things as well.
Ulrich had just asked him—with the Priest's customary tact and delicacy—how he had come to be injured. Karal stopped listening to the rain outside, and devoted his full attention to the conversation.
"That is—an interesting question," the envoy replied measuringly.
"I hope you'll forgive such impertinence," Ulrich told him, with sincerity that was obvious, "but I couldn't help but think, since from the scar it is a recent injury, that it occurred in the war with Ancar. I thought perhaps it might have a bearing on why you are our escort, and not—someone else. And I wondered if something in that tale might account for your astonishingly good command of our tongue."
"It's not all that impertinent. I find stares a great deal ruder. And oddly enough, it does have something to do with why I am here—and why I know Karsite so well," the Valdemaran said, after a pause to examine Ulrich searchingly, as if he was trying to ferret out some hidden motive in asking such a question. "It happened while I was trying to protect one of your fellow Priests of Vkandis."
Ulrich nodded gravely. "You did seem to know a bit too much about us." He raised his mug of tea and sipped. "More than could be accounted for by your presumed acquaintance with a certain Master of Weaponry that we both know is in your Queen's employ."
"Correct." Rubrik smiled crookedly. "Your fellow Priest was not particularly happy to have me guarding him, at the time. Not that I can blame him, since at the time I was not particularly happy to be there. We had something of a cautious truce, but neither of us really trusted the other."
Why does that not surprise me? Karal thought, with heavy irony.
Rubrik closed his eyes briefly and set his cup down. "We went through several encounters without much trouble, but then our lot got hit hard, by a company of Ancar's troops that not only included a mage, but several mages. Good ones, at that. He agreed to hold the rear in a retreat—damned brave of him, I thought—counting on me to keep him from getting hurt while he set up the magic that would take care of that. He got wrapped up in working some complex bit of magery, and couldn't move—"
"Tranced," Ulrich replied succinctly. "Many of the young Priests cannot work magic without being entranced."
Rubrik coughed, picked up his cup again, and sipped his own tea. "Yes, well, the line moved back, and we didn't move with it, and no one noticed for a long, critical moment. And since I'd been assigned to guard him, well, I did."
"And?"
He coughed again. "There were several of them, and only two of us, Laylan and me. I'm not a bad fighter, but I'm no Kerowyn. One of the biggest got through my guard, and I went down, right about the time his magic finally started working. That was when someone behind us noticed we weren't with the group anymore, and came back to get us."
Ulrich tilted his head to one side. "A glancing blow? But obviously one that did a great deal of damage."
Rubrik shivered, in spite of the warmth of the fire. "It was closer than I ever want to come again. I will say the Priest stood by me until the others got to us, right along with Laylan. And he was touchingly grateful, and dragged another one of your Priests over to Heal me as soon as we were hauled back to safety, since there wasn't one of our Healers around that could handle a wound like this one. I'm told that's why the only lasting effect of what could have killed me is this bit of stiffness and an uncooperative leg. Your Healer-Priest was a damned fine human being, treated me as if I was Karsite—and your other lad not only thanked me when I woke up, but acted like he believed in the alliance from then on. That's when my view of your lot changed to something a bit more charitable."
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?"
"Th
at—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.
Karal didn't think he was fanatically-minded, but then again, what fanatic ever did? It was going to take a while to get used to this.
"I think I'm going to go—ah—meditate for a while," he said to Ulrich, who was staring into the fire with every evidence of utter contentment. The Priest waved a lazy hand at him.
"Go right ahead," his master said. "I believe you ought to. You've just had a shock, and you need to think about it. I'm sure your nose will tell you when dinner arrives, if your stomach doesn't demand it first."
Karal put down his mug and retired to his room, flushing in confusion, and wondered how things in his life had managed to become more complicated than he had ever dreamed possible.
And how was he ever going to make all the scattered pieces of it fit again?
He still hadn't quite wrapped his mind around the concept of "Rubrik-as-Hellspawn, Hellspawn-as-Herald" by the time dinner arrived. He ate quickly and quietly, listening, but not participating in the conversation at all. Ulrich and their escort continued their chat as blithely as if nothing whatsoever had changed, although Rubrik did ask, with some concern, if Karal was feeling all right.
"You look pale," he observed, as Karal bolted the last of his dinner. "If you're getting sick, please tell me—this is a good-sized town, and there are real Healers here. Healer-Priests, too, and there may even be one of the splinter Sunlord Temples here—"
"Ah, I meant to ask you about that," Ulrich interjected. "Later, that is."
"It's nothing, sir, my master already knows about it," Karal said hoarsely, taking the proffered excuse for what might be considered rude behavior. "It's just a headache. I—I think I'll go to my room, and sleep it off."
Karal fled before Rubrik could ask anything else. His dinner lay in his stomach like a ball of cold, damp clay. It had probably been excellent; he'd bolted it so fast he hadn't really noticed.
He spent part of the night staring sleeplessly at the ceiling, the murmurs of conversation in the next room scarcely audible over the pounding rain. He wasn't able to make out what the other two were saying, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. He just couldn't handle this. How could he act normally around Rubrik ever again?
But the soft, comfortable bed and the rhythmic pounding of the rain overhead seduced him into a dreamless sleep, and in the morning his anxiety seemed pretty stupid. He lay there in his bed, sheepishly wondering why the "revelation" had seemed so terrible last night. Ulrich was right; Rubrik was still the same man—and Heralds, as Karsite myth painted them, couldn't possibly have been anything like the reality. After all, there were plenty of things that had "always been True" or had been "the Will of Vkandis" that Solaris had proven were lies. So why should anything the False Ones taught about the Heralds be true?
He rose and went into the parlor, to find Ulrich already there and in high good humor, which meant his joints no longer pained him. The doors and windows were standing open wide to a wonderful warm breeze, there was a meal waiting on the table for him, and Rubrik was nowhere in sight. This storm had swept through cleanly last night, leaving behind a morning like a new-minted coin, the air washed so clean and pure that it was a pleasure to breathe. Rubrik had not sent servants to wake them up, and had let them sleep until after the sun rose. After a truly excellent breakfast, they joined their escort in the courtyard of the inn beneath an absolutely cloudless blue sky.
"Headache better?" Rubrik asked, as the horse-boy led Trenor up to Karal and held him so that Karal could mount easily.
"Yes, sir, thank you," Karal was able to reply, with a smile.
"Good. I get a touch of one myself in these wizard-storms. They say most people with any hint of mind-magic do." He gazed searchingly at Karal, who had no idea of what he was talking about. Karal shrugged his incomprehension.
"Yes, but how does that explain my poor, aching joints?" Ulrich put in, with a faint smile. "I certainly do not hear thoughts with my knees!"
Rubrik laughed heartily. "A good question, and one that probably proves that, as always, the nebulous 'they' are probably as foolish as the things 'they' are reputed to say!"
On that cheerful note, he led them out to the road, heading north again, under a brilliant sun.
That seemed a good enough omen to start, and as the morning wore on, Karal managed to dismiss the rest of his lingering fears as absolutely groundless. The Herald and Ulrich must have shared a great deal of personal information after Karal went to bed, for now they acted like a pair of real friends.
Huh, he thought, with astonishment, for Ulrich had never been friends with anyone that Karal had ever noticed. But there it was, as they rode side by side, there was an easiness between them that could not be anything but friendship. Ulrich respected him as soon as we met—and after that, there was a kind of—fellowship, maybe? Something like that, anyway; like he'd have with, oh, one of the Army Captains. Someone who deserved respect and was an interesting and intelligent person, a man he had things in common with. But this is different. I'm not sure how, but it's different. Ulrich seems happier, more open, and the tone of his voice is warmer than it usually is around other people.
He found that Rubrik was taking pains to see that Karal was included in conversation as the day wore on. And somewhat to his astonishment, he realized that he had begun to actually relax around the Herald. If anything, Rubrik reminded him of his favorite uncle, the one who'd been a guard with a merchant caravan and had a wealth of tales about strange places and the wonderful things he had seen.
Rubrik was evidently in the mood to tell some of his own tales this morning, for he began to describe some of the other "foreigners" that they would meet once they reached the capital of Haven and the Court of Queen Selenay. Some of them, Karal would not have believed under any other circumstances, but Rubrik had absolutely no reason to lie and every reason to tell them the whole and complete truth.
But if he was telling the whole and complete truth—some of the other envoys weren't human at all....
Ulrich didn't act at all surpr
ised, though, as the Herald described some of the strangest creatures Karal had ever heard of. The Hawkbrothers were bad enough, with their white hair, intelligent birds, and outlandish clothing. But then he described the gryphons—Treyvan, Hydona, and their two youngsters. It was the little ones that made Karal decide that the Herald was not trying to play some kind of elaborate trick on them. Why make up that kind of detail if it was only a jest? The adult gryphons would have been more than enough.
"I'd been warned," Ulrich said laconically, when Rubrik ended his description. "After all, several of our Priests actually worked with these gryphons. Including one young lady who learned a valuable lesson in—hmm—"
"Cooperation?" Rubrik suggested with a wry smile.
"I was thinking, humility, but that will do." Ulrich's eyes actually twinkled. "Karal, you'll remember her, you were schooled with her. Gisell."
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