{"collection":"Sources of Lord of the Ring","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_ring_two_two19_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_ring_two_two19_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_ring_two_two19_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/ring/two/two19.htm","summary":"*The Worm Ouroboros* (1922) is a high fantasy novel by E. R. Eddison in the tradition of epic romance, written in an archaic Jacobean prose style. This excerpt follows Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha, lords of \"Demonland,\" as they complete a punishing mountaineering traverse of the fictional peak Koshtra Pivrarcha to reach the forbidden summit Koshtra Belorn \u2014 a journey driven by Juss's prophetic dream. After thirteen hours on a deadly ice ridge, they discover a glowing rift in the mountain face that leads them through a subterranean passage into an impossible interior landscape of meadows, night air, and daisies, before arriving at a palace. There they encounter Queen Sophonisba, a divine figure attended by black martlets, whose appearance is heralded by an extraordinary piece of music described in programmatic detail \u2014 moving from martial thunder through lament to a final melody of transcendent beauty. The scene's distinctive quality is Eddison's fusion of extremely precise, technical mountaineering description with mythopoeic grandeur, treating physical endurance and divine encounter as continuous rather than contrasting experiences. Readers drawn to ornate, pre-Tolkien secondary-world fantasy with Homeric scope and Spenserian prose will find this representative of Eddison at his most characteristic.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Worm Ouroboros: XIII. Koshtra Belorn","tradition":"Sources of Lord of the Ring","translated_text":null,"word_count":5079}