Unofficially, I am reading a funny bit of fantasy called The One Tree, by Stephen Donaldson (who I keep wanting to call Donald Stephenson). I have missed the previous four books in the Thomas Covenant saga, as well as the following seven, so I am a little adrift when it comes to understanding it, but most of the narrative hangs together. My biggest complaint is probably the silliness of many of the interpersonal interactions going on – it reads a little like a teen movie, a little like a Mills & Boon book, a little like Lord of the Rings. That aside, though, Donaldson’s impressive vocabulary is driving me back to a dictionary every time I read, which hasn’t happened, like, ever.
Consider the following extract from Chapter 7:
Suddenly, power seemed to flash around her as if she had been dropped like a coal into a tinderbox. Bells clanged in her head – chimes ringing in cotillion on all sides. Bubbles of glauconite and carbuncle burst in her blood; the air burned like a thurible; the world reeled.
Stunned and gaping, she panted for breath. She had been translated by water and travertine to another place altogether – a place of eldritch astonsihment. An opalescent sky stretched over her, with the suggestive evanescence of night and the specificity of day. And under its magic, wonders thronged in corybantic succession. Nearby grew a silver sapling. Like flakes of precious metal, the leaves formed a chiaroscuro around the tree, casting glints and spangles as they whirled. A furry shape like a jarcol went gambolling past, and appeared to trip. Sprawling, it became a profuse scatter of flowers. Blooms that resembled peony and amaryllis sprayed open across the glistening greensward. Birds flew overhead, warbling incrnate. Cavorting in circles, they swept against each other, merged to form an abrupt pillar of fire in the air. A moment later, the fire leapt into sparks, and the sparks became gems – ruby and morganite, sapphire and porphyry, like a trail of stars.
And these were only the nearest entrancements. Other sights abounded; grand statues of water; a pool with its surface woven like an arras; shrubs which flowed through a myriad elegant forms; catenulate sequences of marble, draped from nowhere to nowhere; animals that leaped into the air as birds and drfted down again as snow; swept-wing shapes of malachite flying in gracile curves; sunflowers the size of Giants, with imbricated ophite petals.
And everywhere rang the music of bells – cymbals in carillon, chimes wefted into tapestries of tinkling, tones scattered on all sides – the metal-and-crystal language of Elemesnedene.
Words to learn and use (though perhaps not in everyday conversation) include: eldritch (supernatural, unearthly), imbricate (to regularly overlap), ophite (mottled green), porphyry (rock with large, conspicuous crystals), arras (a wall hanging or tapestry), catenulate (chain-like), exigency (a quality of requiring much effort or urgency), anadem (a wreath or garland for the head), and copasetic (satisfactory).