Perrin turned to look at the speaker. The round tables scattered about the room were empty except for the lone man seated in a corner, in the shadows. The rest of the room seemed in some way hazy, almost an impression rather than a place, especially anything he was not looking at directly. He glanced back at the fire; it burned on a brick hearth, now. Somehow, none of it bothered him. It should. But he could not have said why.
The man beckoned, and Perrin walked closer to his table. A square table. The tables were square. Frowning, he reached out to finger the tabletop, but pulled his hand back. There were no lamps in that corner of the room, and despite the light elsewhere, the man and his table were almost hidden, nearly blended with the dimness.
Perrin had a feeling that he knew the man, but it was as vague as what he saw out of the corner of his eye. The fellow was in his middle years, handsome and too well dressed for a country inn, in dark, nearly black, velvets with white lace falls at his collar and cuffs. He sat stiffly, sometimes pressing a hand to his chest, as if moving hurt him. His dark eyes were fixed on Perrin's face; they appeared like glistening points in the shadows.
“Give up what?” Perrin asked.
“That, of course.” The man nodded to the axe at Perrin's waist. He sounded surprised, as if it were a conversation they had had before, an old argument taken up again.
Perrin had not realized the axe was there, had not felt the weight of it pulling at his belt. He ran a hand over the halfmoon blade and the chick spike that balanced it. The steel felt — solid. More solid than anything else there. Maybe even more solid than he was himself. He kept his hand there, to hold onto something real.
“I have thought of it,” he said, “but I do not think I can. Not yet.” Not yet? The inn seemed to flicker, and the murmur sounded again in his head. No! The murmur faded.
“No?” The man smiled, a cold smile. “You are a blacksmith, boy. And a good one, from what I hear. Your hands were made for a hammer, not an axe. Made to make things, not to kill. Go back to that before it is too late.”
Perrin found himself nodding. “Yes. But I'm ta'veren.” He had never said that out loud before. But he knows it already. He was sure of that, though he could not say why.
For an instant the man's smile became a grimace, but then it returned in more strength than before. A cold strength. “There are ways to change things, boy. Ways to avoid even fate. Sit, and we will talk of them.” The shadows appeared to shift and thicken, to reach out.
Perrin took a step back, keeping well in the light. “I don't think so.”
“At least have a drink with me. To years past and years to come. Here, you will see things more clearly after.” The cup the man pushed across the table had not been there a moment before. It shone bright silver, and dark, bloodred wine filled it to the brim.
Perrin peered at the man's face. Even to his sharp eyes, the shadows seemed to shroud the other man's features like a Warder's cloak. Darkness molded the man like a caress. There was something about the man's eyes, something he thought he could remember if he tried hard enough. The murmur returned.
“No,” he said. He spoke to the soft sound inside his head, but when the man's mouth tightened in anger, a flash of rage suppressed as soon as begun, he decided it would do for the wine as well. “I am not thirsty.”
He turned and started for the door. The fireplace was rounded river stones; a few long tables lined by benches filled the room. He suddenly wanted to be outside, anywhere away from this man.
“You will not have many chances,” the man said behind him in a hard voice. “Three threads woven together share one another's doom. When one is cut, all are. Fate can kill you, if it does not do worse.”
Perrin felt a sudden heat against his back, rising then fading just as quickly, as if the doors of a huge smelting furnace had swung open and closed again. Startled, he turned back to the room. It was empty.
Only a dream, he thought, shivering from the cold, and with that everything shifted.
He stared into the mirror, a part of him not comprehending what he saw, another part accepting. A gilded helmet, worked like a lion's head, sat on his head as if it belonged there. Gold leaf covered his ornately hammered breastplate, and goldwork embellished the plate and mail on his arms and legs. Only the axe at his side was plain. A voice — his own — whispered in his mind that he would take it over any other weapon, had carried it a thousand times, in a hundred battles. No! He wanted to take it off, throw it away. I can't! There was a sound in his head, louder than a murmur, almost at the level of understanding.
“A man destined for glory.”
He spun away from the mirror and found himself staring at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He noticed nothing else about the room, cared to see nothing but her. Her eyes were pools of midnight, her skin creamy pale and surely softer, more smooth than her dress of white silk. When she moved toward him, his mouth went dry. He realized that every other woman he had ever seen was clumsy and illshaped. He shivered, and wondered why he felt cold.
“A man should grasp his destiny with both hands,” she said, smiling. It was almost enough to warm him, that smile. She was tall, less than a hand short of being able to look him in the eyes. Silver combs held hair darker than a raven's wing. A broad belt of silver links banded a waist he could have encircled with his hands.
“Yes,” he whispered. Inside him, startlement fought with acceptance. He had no use for glory. But when she said it, he wanted nothing else. “I mean...” The murmuring sound dug at his skull. “No!” It was gone, and for a moment, so was acceptance. Almost. He put a hand to his head, touched the golden helmet, took it off. “I... I don't think I want this. It is not mine.”
“Don't want it?” She laughed. “What man with blood in his veins would not want glory? As much glory as if you had sounded the Horn of Valere.”
“I don't,” he said, though a piece of him shouted that he lied. The Horn of Valere. The Horn rang out, and the wild charge began. Death rode at his shoulder, and yet she waited ahead, too. His lover. His destroyer. “No! I am a blacksmith.”
Her smile was pitying. “Such a little thing to want. You must not listen to those who would try to turn you from your destiny. They would demean you, debase you. Destroy you. Fighting fate can only bring pain. Why choose pain, when you can have glory? When your name can be remembered alongside all the heroes of legend?”
“I am no hero.”
“You don't know the half of what you are. Of what you can be. Come, share a cup with me, to destiny and glory.” There was a shining silver cup in her hand, filled with bloodred wine. “Drink.”
He stared at the cup, frowning. There was something... familiar about it. A growling chewed at his brain. “No!” He fought away from it, refusing to listen. “No!”
She held out the golden cup to him. “Drink.”