And it shall come to pass that what man made shall be shattered, and the Shadow shall lie across the Pattern of 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...
from The Karaethon Cycle: The Prophecies of the Dragon,
as translated by Ellaine Marise'idin Alshinn,
Chief Librarian at the Court of Arafel,
in the Year of Grace 231 of the New Era, the Third Age
The very first lines in the book come before the Prologue and the opening paragraph of the first chapter. The first lines—of which that quoted above is merely an extract—the first paragraph—are found in the prefatory material where one often finds a quotation from a famous book or song or maybe a snatch of famous dialogue from a movie. This is a literary device called an epigraph and the purpose can be multiple. Shorter quotes than the one above can often signify a certain overarching theme the reader should be aware of or, in some cases, a mood or tone the writer is trying to impart before the reader settles in. (For instance, a famously ironic quote used as an epigraph might be an alert to the reader that what seems to be sincere in the book might actually be better interpreted ironically.)
There is another element to the epigraph that usually applies as well: typically, the quote is derived from an actual text existing in our own world which the interested reader can, if so motivated, look further into. It is almost solely within the domain of the fantasy genre that epigraphs like this are found: quotes from texts which do not exist, at least not in their entirety, that were composed not by another author, but the writer of the very book one is reading. The immersive quality of the fictional worlds found in fantasy novels is the kind of stuff of which obsessive-compulsive traits of many of the genre’s most fervent fans is founded.
“You must know that the Great Hunt of the Horn has been called in Illian, the first time in four hundred years. The Illianers say the Last Battle is coming…and the Horn of Valere must be found before the final battle against the Shadow. Men from every land are already gathering, all eager to be part of the legend, eager to find the Horn.”
So, there it is, the purpose and background of the titular hunt which is, indeed, great in significance. But what exactly is this “Horn of Valere” all about, really? Why so important? For one thing, it is endowed with the quality of myth and legend, having been thought to be long since destroyed if, indeed, it had ever really existed in the first place. But it is not just the past which gives the object a mythic quality. That quality is also derived from its place in the future that is yet to come. There are famously many prophecies in the books making up The Wheel of Time series and one of those foretells that the Horn of Valere—long thought lost, remember—will be found and only just in the nick of time to be put to use in the apocalyptic showdown between good and evil. Great, so what’s it actually do? Resurrects the heroes of the past who are dead and buried so they can be called back to service to fight again.
Yet one thing every tale had the same. At their head rode a man whose face had been seen in the sky above Falme, and they rode under the banner of the Dragon Reborn.
Reaching the concluding lines of a single book within a series is like watching The Empire Strikes Back over and over again. Individual storylines of a lesser nature may have been resolved, but the narrative as a cohesive whole must remain open-ended. There is more to come and reader know it therefore it is natural for a sense of a letdown on the final page. The final page cannot really be termed an ending since nothing has been resolved. One can only hope with new successive entry that something jaw-dropping along the lines of Darth Vader’s confession to Luke Skywalker will have happened near the end to create a soft landing for the letdown.
Does this ambiguous suggestion of a mysterious rider fulfill the capacity of dropping jaws? One will have to read the whole thing that comes before it to make that determination. Of course, it must be also noted that the quote above is not, technically, the final line in the novel. There is yet one more page to go. And it, like epigraph at the beginning, is an extended quote from another book which does not exist in our world, but to fans of the series is every bit as authentic a document from the past as if it did.
