The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan

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 ill-shaped. 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 blood-red 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 low-railed bridge of stone, arching from one wide, flat-topped 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, andhe 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 railless 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