Robert Jordan - The Great Hunt: Book Two of The Wheel of Time

THE WHEEL OF TIME

Book Two

THE GREAT HUNT

Jordan has come to dominate the world that Tolkien began to reveal.... The battle scenes have the breathless urgency of firsthand experience, and the... evil laced into the forces of good, the dangers latent in any promised salvation, the sense of the unavoidable onslaught of unpredictable events bear the marks of American national experience during the last three decades.

Edward Rothstein, The New York Times

Those who like fantasy can rejoice. This is the genuine article... characters you can care about, a world you can believe in, hideous monsters, battles, magic, even love.

I only have one problem. How am I going to get by until the next volume comes out?

John Lee, author of The Unicorn Solution

Rousing, slam-bang... full of valiant skirmishes, great heroes, and close rescues. The real war is only beginning, but this one battle at least ends with the sort of grand finale worth rereading a time or two.

Locus

This is good stuff. To write one absorbing long novel [The Eye of the World] is an achievement; to write two is miraculous, and [with The Great Hunt Jordan has] achieved the miracle.... I shall certainly [line up] for the third volume.

Interzone

Praise for

THE WHEEL OF TIME

Book One

THE EYE OF THE WORLD

New readers are advised to start with the first book, The Eye of the World. It may take you a year of steady reading, but by next year youll be chomping at the bit to jump on the [newest] book.

Robert Knox, MPG Newspapers

Robert Jordan writes with the stark vision of light and darkness, and sometimes childlike sense of wonder, that permeates J.R.R. Tolkiens works.

The Pittsburgh Press

The Eye of the World is the best of its genre.

Ottawa Citizen

A major piece of fantasy. Jordan has not merely put old wine into new bottles: he has clothed old bones with new flesh.

Chicago Sun-Times

Jordans world is rich in detail and his plot is rich in incident. Highly recommended.

ALA Booklist

A powerful vision of good and evil... [and] fascinating people moving through a rich and interesting world.

Orson Scott Card

Magic and pacing and detail and human involvement, with a certain subtlety of presentation and a grand central vision. Robert Jordan... is a lot of writer!

Piers Anthony

An exciting story; the reader is drawn in early and kept there until the last page. There is adventure and mystery and dark things that move in the nighta combination of Robin Hood and Stephen King that is hard to resist.... Jordan makes the reader care about these characters as though they were old friends.

Milwaukee Sentinel

Goodness, life, and light are always in retreat, always about to be defeated, but never quite! Dont miss it!

Andrew M. Greeley

One hell of a story. [It] kept me up past my bedtime for three nights runningand its been a long time since a novels done that. Jordan keeps the suspense acute and the surprises and invention beautifully paced. Compelling. An exhilarating experience.

Isaac Asimovs Science Fiction Magazine

THE WHEEL OF TIME

by Robert Jordan

The Eye of the World

The Great Hunt

The Dragon Reborn

The Shadow Rising

The Fires of Heaven

Lord of Chaos

A Crown of Swords

The Path of Daggers

Winters Heart

Crossroads of Twilight

Knife of Dreams

by Robert Jordan

and Brandon Sanderson

The Gathering Storm

THE

GREAT

HUNT

ROBERT JORDAN

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOKNEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE GREAT HUNT

Copyright 1990 by The Bandersnatch Group, Inc.

The phrases The Wheel of Time and The Dragon Reborn, and the snake-wheel symbol, are trademarks of Robert Jordan.

All rights reserved.

Frontispiece by Kekai Kotaki

Maps by Ellisa Mitchell

Interior illustrations by Matthew C. Nielsen and Ellisa Mitchell

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-1-4299-6013-7

First Edition: November 1990

First E-book Edition: November 2009

Manufactured in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to Lucinda Culpin, Al Dempsey, Tom Doherty, Susan England, Dick Gallen, Cathy Grooms, Marisa Grooms, Wilson and Janet Grooms, John Jarrold, the Johnson City Boys (Mike Leslie, Kenneth Loveless, James D. Lund, Paul R. Robinson), Karl Lundgren, William McDougal, the Montana Gang (Eldon Carter, Ray Grenfell, Ken Miller, Rod Moore, Dick Schmidt, Ray Sessions, Ed Wildey, Mike Wildey, and Sherman Williams), Charlie Moore, Louisa Cheves Popham Raoul, Ted and Sydney Rigney, Robert A. T. Scott, Bryan and Sharon Webb, and Heather Wood.

They came to my aid when God walked across the water and the true Eye of the World passed over my house.

Robert Jordan

Charleston, SC

February 1990

CONTENTS

And it shall come to pass that what men made shall be shattered, and the Shadow shall lie across the Pattern of the Age, and the Dark One shall once more lay his hand upon the world of man. Women shall weep and men quail as the nations of the earth are rent like rotting cloth. Neither shall anything stand nor abide...

Yet one shall be born to face the Shadow, born once more as he was born before and shall be born again, time without end. The Dragon shall be Reborn, and there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth at his rebirth. In sackcloth and ashes shall he clothe the people, and he shall break the world again by his coming, tearing apart all ties that bind. Like the unfettered dawn shall he blind us, and burn us, yet shall the Dragon Reborn confront the Shadow at the Last Battle, and his blood shall give us the Light. Let tears flow, O ye people of the world. Weep for your salvation.

from The Karaethon Cycle:

The Prophecies of the Dragon,

as translated by Ellaine Mariseidin Alshinn,

Chief Librarian at the Court of Arafel,

in the Year of Grace 231

of the New Era, the Third Age

In the Shadow

T he man who called himself Bors, at least in this place, sneered at the low murmuring that rolled around the vaulted chamber like the soft gabble of geese. His grimace was hidden by the black silk mask that covered his face, though, just like the masks that covered the hundred other faces in the chamber. A hundred black masks, and a hundred pairs of eyes trying to see what lay behind them.

If one did not look too closely, the huge room could have been in a palace, with its tall marble fireplaces and its golden lamps hanging from the domed ceiling, its colorful tapestries and intricately patterned mosaic floor. If one did not look too closely. The fireplaces were cold, for one thing. Flames danced on logs as thick as a mans leg, but gave no heat. The walls behind the tapestries, the ceiling high above the lamps, were undressed stone, almost black. There were no windows, and only two doorways, one at either end of the room. It was as if someone had intended to give the semblance of a palace reception chamber but had not cared enough to bother with more than the outline and a few touches for detail.