by Tanith Lee
“I must go on with the task,” said Pereban, as the dog scraped the floor with claws like those of a leopard, “And therefore I must and do truly wish to conquer this animal.” The dog came padding on, jaws gaping. Pereban strode forward to meet it. The dog hesitated and Pereban next instant came up with it, and his head was level with its own. He stared into its fulminating eyes. “Whatever your size or accessories,” said Pereban to the creature, “you are a dog. Obey me!” The dog seemed undecided. Pereban bethought him of the apricot, and drawing it out again showed it to the dog, which now looked mostly surprised. Then Pereban hurled the apricot away. “Go fetch!” cried Pereban. The dog abruptly reversed itself and went bounding off to search out the fruit, its tail—which Pereban had noted was a serpent—wagging with glee.
Pereban now advanced on the couch. Drawing aside the hangings, he looked down to find some hag-like queen. For though seven hundred years in Dooniveh was nearer sixty of the earth’s, it seemed enough to spoil a young woman’s initial bloom.
But naturally in this, as with the rest, the priest’s adventure stayed faithful to the myths. For her sleep was an enchanted one, and there she lay, the lady of the moon-country, a maiden slender and pale as a stem of the white iris, and with topaz hair. She was robed in purple embroidered with yellow diamonds, and on her brow rested a golden tiara, and between her hands as she slept lay a little casket of dark silver, which seemed oddly to throb with the rise and fall of her breast as she breathed.
Pereban now knew his lesson. He did not touch her, but leaning over her spoke very low. “Awake,” said he. And the beautiful queen of Dooniveh, who had slept seven hundred years of the moon, some fifty-eight or sixty of the world, awakened.
Her eyes were the luminous color of Dooniveh’s summer sky, and quite as cool, and indeed much emptier. She observed Pereban with no amazement. She said, “You have brought me up out of sleep.”
“So I have.”
“You are not the first. Others have done so. To our mutual regret.”
This did not accord with mythology.
“It is against your will then that I have woken you?”
“Yes,” said she, gazing with cool cruel eyes. “For you are not the one who should have done it, as none of them were that one.”
“Then I will leave you. You may resume your slumber.”
“That is not to be. Not yet. The spell of sleep is torn, and until I have in answer torn your pride and spirit and made a fool of you, I may not raise its magic up again.”
And having said these not much consoling words, the queen of Dooniveh left her couch, and going to the basin of black liquid, tipped into it something from her casket. Deep down into the water it went, sending up behind it a kind of tremor. And next the water itself seemed to begin slowly to throb, as if in its turn it breathed.
“What did you throw in there?” asked Pereban, having at that moment nothing better to say.
“My heart,” she said. “Since neither you nor I will get any use from it.”
Just then the fearful dog came bounding back and placed the apricot daintily at Pereban’s feet.
“Wise dog, excellent dog,” said Pereban, patting the enormity on its head between the horns. The dog smiled and dribbled and the serpent wagged.
“Ah,” said the queen, and now she did seem a little interested. “You are not exactly like those others. They sprung sorcery and potions on this cur and woke me with a kiss.”
“I am a priest,” said Pereban. He blushed and looked elsewhere than her unkind eyes. “I cannot say I have never sinned, but never with man or woman have I indulged my desire.”
“And the door of iron—did you bring a hundred warriors to break it down, or a magical fire to melt it?”
“No. I knocked and asked entry.”
The queen folded her white hands. She seated herself at the rim of the basin and turned her eyes on its pulsing water.
“I am named Idune,” she said. “I will tell you my short history, for though I have lived long, I have lived most of my years asleep. And my heart, there in the pool, is sleeping yet. For the one of whom the prophecy spoke has never come to wake my heart. It slumbers and dreams, while I am heartless. But you shall hear.”
Then she told him her story.
She had ruled her palace-city and her bleak land alone until her one hundred and ninety-second year, at which time she was sixteen. She then consented to wed and provide the world with a king. She had chosen him from her court of princes and soldiers, scholars and mages. He was handsome and noble, all approved the match. And Idune, although she did not love the man, was not averse to him. The fourth nightless day of midsummer arrived, the day of the marriage. But as the royal couple stood hand in hand in the hall where such rites and legalities were seen to, panic-stricken outcry was heard in the streets below. A flaming spark had shot out from the sun and was rushing, on an incendiary trail, even now toward the palace. It struck the ground with a roar and blaze in a court beneath the marriage chamber. And when the crash of its concussion faded, a voice cried out these words: “The Moon Queen may only wed the Sun Lord, the King of Gold, to which her sun-like hair gives the clue. Let her invoke sleep otherwise and so pass the aeons, unless she take him, since in all other liaisons she will know sorrow and discontent. Her heart shall break and her husband be disgraced.”
The voice was then silent. Putting off the marriage ceremony, Idune summoned her magicians.
For three summer day-and-night days, they labored at divinations. Eventually they came before Idune and her bridegroom and spoke in whispers.
The world of their sun was incomprehensible to the people of Dooniveh, yet so influenced their lives they could hardly ignore its whims. The sun prophecy was valid, all portents endorsed it. The queen of the moonworld must wed the lord of the sun. It would be madness to go against the auguries.
Idune therefore postponed her wedding thirty years (some two and a half of the earth), in order to give the sun lord time to show up.
The city sensed already its queen was doomed. But as government scarcely existed there, and since the people were for the most part unambitious, melancholy and vague, no one took pains over the affair.
When the thirty years were up, and no sun lord had arrived, Idune publicly announced that she would after all wed the fore-chosen, champing Doonish prince.
She did so.
The marriage then lasted a few seasons, at the end of which Idune publicly announced her error in going against the sun’s edict. The union was loveless, childless, pointless, and—worst of all—dull. This was naturally ascribed to the jilted wrath of the sun.
Having divorced her king, Idune retired from the world into a chamber under the city. Here, guarded by a magical beast, she contrived to extract her heart—or rather, its intrinsic, nonphysical essence—sealing it in a casket for safety. She had already discerned a chip or two and feared breakages. She then invoked the sorcerous sleep. Her prescribed suitor alone, having descended from the sun, would dare to wake her.
The divorced king meanwhile continued to rule Dooniveh, in whatever fashion he was able and that it would permit him. In respect of title, he was known no longer as the king, but only as lord.
Time thereafter passed, and finally one summer day a young man with golden hair, or at least hair of a more vivid shade of blond than was usual, arrived at the palace saying he had descended from the solar orb, wished to wed the queen and become king of Dooniveh.
It was explained to him that he must first get by an impassable door, subdue a ferocious monster, and then overcome the spell of sleep upon the queen. None of this seemed to startle him, he appeared already aware of the facts, though oddly enough the act of whirling down the sky had deprived him of all memory of the home world, the sun. (And there were even those who said this young man greatly resembled one of the minor princes of the court, who had not been seen
in the city for some hundred years, though a camp of bear breeders in the mountains had spotted him occasionally, roaming and muttering.)
Well then, this suitor of the slightly-gilded hair managed to break in the iron door, overcome the beast by tossing a drug in its jaws, and wake Idune by falling upon and ravishing her.
Since he was judged in this way to have fulfilled the stipulations, Idune emerged from seclusion and wedded him. The previous king was ousted, though he was still addressed as “Lord.” But the newcomer kinged it in Dooniveh until, after a few seasons, the queen went publicly once more to confess his disgrace.
The marriage was ill-fated, as had been the first marriage. It could not be that he was an impostor, perhaps only not quite of the right solar family.
Idune divorced him. He then presided over Dooniveh as Lord Two, in company with Lord One, the former king before him (this alliance being quite as unhappy as either of the marriages). Idune retired again into enchanted sleep.
Next, of course, came the advent of a third suitor of frailly yellowish hair. He proceeded exactly as Lord Two had done in almost every intent and purpose. And soon, after some sun-amnesia, door-melting, dog-ensorcelling, labial violence, marrying, marital strife and divorcement, ended up also in exactly the same way, under the name of Lord Three.
There then ensued a space of peace, during which Idune the queen slept on, and Lord One established an upper if elderly hand over the Shining City.
It came eventually to be, however, that one summer day-night, watchers beheld another glittering mote falling through the air. The city gathered itself, now somewhat listlessly. Out went a procession and collected the skyfallen Pereban like a shell from the shore.
What a combination then must have been the feelings of Lord One, let alone of Lords Two and Three. Jealousy and awe, suspicion and superstition, bitterness, dishonored embarrassment and duty.
Pereban, his brain now awash with the tale, gazed on the dejected queen, this ancient girl with razor-steel for eyes.
“Madam,” he said, “have no fear of me. Under such circumstances, I would not aspire to be your fourth spouse. I admit freely I did not fall here from your sun, but from another world, whose being I hesitate to describe.”
Idune gazed into the pool, where Pereban’s reflection nevertheless wavered.
“Yet you are,” said she, “uncommonly handsome, and your hair is, this once, of the correct shade. Perhaps you he. Perhaps you are my true predestined lover, but do not after all like the look of me.”
“Your beauty leaves me breathless,” said Pereban.
“Yet you find the breath to say so. And, you say you will not have me. Possibly Lord One had told you how I bit off the lobe of his ear in a fit of anguish. Or was it Lord Three who has been blabbing how I fed him in his wine medicine to annoy the bladder. Or Lord Two has dragged up again that tiresome episode of the crumbs of glass I shook into his underclothing.”
“Madam,” said Pereban swiftly, “you are not to blame. You have, as you told me, no heart at present.”
“That is so. Which brings it to my mind you cannot be the sun lord, for my heart would wake at his approach, wherever it was. There could be no doubt.”
And Idune sighed, so the reflection of Pereban rippled and disappeared from the water.
“What then is to be done?” she asked. “I pine, though my heart sleeps on.”
“We are taught that the gods do not care for us,” said Pereban the priest. “Therefore we must seek for guidance in our own selves.”
Idune raised her eyes. In them he recognized for a moment a somber longing long unassuaged.
“Then you must seek this guidance,” said the queen. “You have disturbed my rest. I will grant you the seven days of summer to find a solution to the sun’s curse. And if you fail I will have you rent apart by the white bears, being presently heartless, as you have observed.”
• • •
Pereban requested for himself a small uncluttered chamber, and here he paced about, or sat upon the floor, ate frugally, beat himself with the apricot, all the time thinking. Having got through so many eccentric scrapes, he did not now believe he would be proffered again to death. Accordingly some idea must suggest itself to him to solve the plight of the heartless Queen Idune. And being so certain of this, naturally in quite a short while a solution did suggest itself.
Thereafter Pereban paid a second call on the monster dog in the underpalace, and put it to a strenuous but rewarding session of Go Fetch.
The last day of summer commenced. Frost sprinkled on the pinnacles of the Shining City and on the floor of Pereban’s allotted room—for he had given over coddling himself and gone back to most of the strictures of his temple, which he found a vast relief.
Late in that day, probably about midnight by the reckoning of the earth, Idune came sweeping in through the frost. She was attended by all three lords, several mages and sages, and the chief bearkeeper, who gazed on Pereban in compassionate distress.
“Your answer,” demanded Idune without prologue.
“You have been given a fate and a prophecy,” said Pereban. “You have misheard and misread both.”
“What!” cried Idune. Her court gaped, and the bearkeeper grew less agitated.
“Repeat to me again,” said Pereban, “the message the voice delivered on the day before the first marriage was due.”
Idune pointed at a sage noted for his memory.
He duly relayed the fatal words:
“The Moon Queen may only wed the Sun Lord, the King of Gold, to which her sun-like hair gives the clue.” (Here all the court then present moaned it was no more than a fact, and how peerless was the queen and how lovely her yellow hair. But Idune glared about her and they were quiet. The sage went on.) “Let her invoke sleep otherwise and so pass the eons, unless she take him, since in all other liaisons she will know sorrow and discontent. Her heart shall break, and her husband be disgraced.”
“And for this,” said Pereban, “you have waited, or you have given yourself to others who could end your sleep if not wake your heart.”
“So I have,” said Idune in a terrible voice. “Do you tell me that which I already know? Here I am, but he has not come to me. What is new? I hope that the royal bears have had their talons properly sharpened.”
Pereban gravely smiled.
“Where in the message then,” said he, with cardinal grace, “does it say your sun lord will come to you?”
“It says I may wed him alone. That I must take him or be doomed. How else is any of that to follow unless he intends to claim me?”
“That is not to say he must fall out of the sun to do it.”
There was surely silence after that.
At long last, Idune went near to Pereban and stared at him with her winter eyes wide.
“How then?”
“You are plainly a sorceress. You must devise a sorcery of ascent. For I believe that, rather than wait here beneath, you must go up to the sun to gain your husband. You were meant to rise to meet him, not to pull him down on this cold rock. Doubtless having invited you, he has awaited your advent in his kingdom as anxiously and disconsolately as you have mooned here below. Hopefully his youth is as enduring as your own, or else you have lost your chance forever.”
Idune uttered a wild cry. Rounding on her court, she spoke very ill of it. Pereban recalled her. “Waste not another second. If you are able to effect the journey, do so.”
“You will come with me,” said she with a look at him, half pleading and half poisonous.
Pereban did not remonstrate.
“Fetch a bear!” exclaimed the queen. The bearkeeper protested. “Not for rending, for riding, O fool!” she screamed.
The bear was brought. Queen Idune and Pereban the young priest mounted it. With no further provision they left the city for the shore in the wake of the
wandering sun.
• • •
Upon the seashore, in the darkening light of autumn, Idune raised her pale arms free of their purple sleeves, and called the whales of the deep.
Up they came, those strange fantastic creatures, borne on their wing-fins. And as each rose, it blew out the waters of the moon, until these fountains hid the sky in a weave of ink and milk.
Then Idune, who was certainly a sorceress, though of a sort not found upon earth, communed with the whales. She did this in another tongue, like a high thin singing, until Pereban’s ears were sore at it, and the white bear rumbled and took itself off along the strand.
“Do not you attempt to leave me,” the queen admonished Pereban. “One comes to us to set us on the road you have advised.”
But Pereban had only been viewing the weak sun, where it hung now above the shore. Having pronounced, he had wondered if the solar flames would be too fierce after all for an approach. But this did not look likely, so wan seemed the disc. As for Idune, she had made no protestation concerning fire. Though perhaps she was past caring, and preferred to burn after a life of frigid sleep.
The whales were now sinking again down under the water. For a moment all was still, as if no life was in the ocean. But soon came a colossal surge, so strong the waves a mile out stood to the sky, and the nearer waters rushed in along the shore, and went past the queen and Pereban as high as their breast or shoulders—but she had formed some magic barrier, so the thick water could not sweep them away. Then the whole sea appeared to part, and out of it there came up a whale so huge it was like a living mountain made of one gray pearl. And this creature, turning as it leapt, dipped down again in a perfect curve, but, not entirely sinking, and presented to them in the churning maelstrom its back, like an island.
“There is the chariot,” said Idune.
And so saying, she stepped out on the sea, which bore her up, and Pereban followed her and found the water also bore him, so buoyant and unnatural it was. In this way they walked out to the whale’s back. Coming close, one saw there were runnels and welts on the skin of the beast great as paths and lanes, and up these Idune passaged, and Pereban after her. Thus they reached the top of the whale, and found there a sort of ridge, and to the outcrops of this Idune tied herself with her diamond girdle.
