The Great Hunt

The fantasy genre is filled with totemic symbols of power, including Tolkien’s One Ring, Harry Potter’s scar, King Arthur’s sword Excalibur. In The Great Hunt, that symbol is the Horn of Valere. When sounded, the Horn has the power to summon Artur Hawkwing and his army to the service of whoever possesses it. Magic is often a nebulous and difficult to perceive with the senses, and these symbols provide a clear, concrete representation of that power that can be seen, touched, and, in the case of the Horn, heard. The Horn, like the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend, is a tangible object that can be sought, giving the narrative the momentum of the quest. The characters also imbue it with great value: Ingtar obsesses over its recovery to the exclusion of all else; Selene pushes Rand to take the Horn for himself in defiance of his original mission; the city of Illian celebrates an annual cultural ritual around the hunt for the Horn. All this attention creates a mystique of tremendous importance around the Horn and focuses the characters’ attention on a physical object that readers can easily visualize and endow with their own concept of magic.