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.”
Golden? I thought the cup was... It was... The rest of the thought would not come. But in his confusion the sound came again, inside, gnawing, demanding to be heard. “No,” he said. “No!” He looked at the golden helmet in his hands and threw it aside. “I am a blacksmith. I am...” The sound within his head fought him, struggling toward being heard. He wrapped his arms around his head to shut it out, and only shut it in. “I — am — a — man!” he shouted.
Darkness enfolded him, but her voice followed, whispering. “The night is always there, and dreams come to all men. Especially you, my wildling. And I will always be in your dreams.”
Stillness.
He lowered his arms. He was back in his own coat and breeches again, sturdy and well made, if plain. Suitable garb for a blacksmith, or any country man. Yet he barely noticed them.
He stood on a lowrailed bridge of stone, arching from one wide, flattopped stone spire to another, spires that rose from depths too far for even his eyes to penetrate. The light would have been dim to any other eyes, and he could not make out from where it came. It just was. Everywhere he looked, left and right, up or down, were more bridges, more spires, and tailless ramps. There seemed no end to them, no pattern. Worse, some of those ramps climbed to spire tops that had to be directly above the ones they had left. Splashing water echoed, the sound seeming to come from everywhere at once. He shivered with cold.
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he caught a motion, and without thinking, he crouched behind the stone railing. There was danger in being seen. He did not know why, but he knew it was true. He just knew.
Cautiously peering over the top of the rail, he sought what he had seen moving. A flash of white flickered on a distant ramp. A woman, he was sure, though he could not quite make her out. A woman in a white