Free The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan Page B

were almost hidden, nearly blended with the dimness.
    Perrin had a feeling that he knew the man, but it was as vague aswhat 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 half-moon blade and the thick 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, blood-red 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 theman’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 gold-work 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