The Great Hunt recap

The Horn of Valere and Mat's tainted dagger are stolen from the fortress of Fal Dara by the Darkfriend Padan Fain, and Rand joins a party to hunt them across the land, aided by an Ogier and a man who can smell violence, and troubled by a beautiful stranger who is not what she seems. Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Min travel toward the White Tower, but every road bends toward the far western town of Falme, seized by the Seanchan, invaders from across the ocean who collar women who can channel as slave weapons called damane. Egwene is captured and leashed, then freed by her friends. At the climax Mat sounds the Horn of Valere, summoning the legendary Heroes of the Ages back to battle, and Rand fights the fiery-eyed Ba'alzamon in the sky above Falme, watched by thousands as the sign of the Dragon burns in the heavens. The Seanchan are thrown back, and Rand is at last openly proclaimed the Dragon Reborn.

In the first book, Trollocs attacked the remote village of Emond's Field, hunting three young men - Rand al'Thor, Mat Cauthon, and Perrin Aybara. The Aes Sedai Moiraine and her Warder Lan led them to safety, joined by Egwene, the young Wisdom Nynaeve, and the gleeman Thom Merrilin. Pursued by the Shadow, the company sheltered in the cursed city of Shadar Logoth, where Mat took a tainted dagger, and were scattered. Through separate ordeals - Perrin bonding with wolves, Mat sickening from the dagger, all of them hunted - they reunited in Caemlyn and crossed the deadly Ways to the Borderland nation of Shienar. Learning that the Dark One's forces sought the Eye of the World, they rode into the poisoned Blight, where two of the freed Forsaken ambushed them. In the crisis Rand seized the One Power for the first time, destroyed the Forsaken, shattered a Trolloc army at Tarwin's Gap, and battled the fiery-eyed Ba'alzamon. Moiraine proclaimed him the Dragon Reborn: a man able to channel, prophesied to fight the Dark One, and therefore fated to be driven mad by the Power's taint. Recovered at the Eye were the Horn of Valere, which can summon dead heroes to battle, and the banner of the Dragon. Egwene and Nynaeve, revealed as channelers, were bound for training. As this book opens, the friends have gathered again at the fortress of Fal Dara in Shienar, and Rand is desperate to flee a destiny he still refuses to believe is his.

The hunt for the Horn of Valere ends at Falme. Rand recovers the Horn and the tainted dagger, but the town is held by the Seanchan, who have captured Egwene and leashed her as a damane. Her friends free her, and in the chaos of battle Mat winds the Horn, calling back the Heroes of the Ages, among them the legendary conqueror Artur Hawkwing, who rally to Rand as one bound to the Horn. In the sky above Falme, Rand duels the fiery-eyed Ba'alzamon before a vast crowd, the great sign of the Dragon blazing overhead, and appears to strike him down, though such an enemy is not so easily ended. Witnessed by so many, Rand can no longer hide what he is: he is hailed openly as the Dragon Reborn, and word of it races across the world. The Seanchan invaders are driven back to their ships for now, but they have not surrendered their claim on these lands, and their leashed channelers remain a horror. Padan Fain slips away with his malice intact. Rand has begun, however unwillingly, to shoulder his role, and the friends of Emond's Field are scattered toward separate destinies - the women to the White Tower, Rand to the weight of a prophecy the whole world now knows he carries.