Paul of Dune

Emperor Muad’Dib

10,198 AG

1

Leaving the scarred Celestial Audience Chamber empty, Emperor Paul-Muad’Dib sat on the great Hagal quartz chair and held court in his original throne room. Every day, he heard the clear, heart-wrenching misery expressed by so many faithful people, but he could not allow himself to be swayed. Yes, some of them had been crushed under the wheels of Paul’s own government, but he could not allow himself to care for all of them, to feel the million little cuts of their individual pain. In a sense, their suffering was essential to humanity’s continued existence. Paul’s prescience had forced him to look at the larger picture, and hold a steady course. It was the greater, terrible purpose within him, the only way he could lead humankind to the end result. He had to be Muad’Dib, even if that meant he must appear harsh and cold.

Duke Leto Atreides, and before him Old Duke Paulus, had loved to meet the people face to face. They considered direct interaction with their subjects a vital aspect of remaining in touch, ruler to ruled. After Bludd’s shocking actions, though, and the subsequent discoveries of one embryonic conspiracy after another, Paul found the process of holding court to be exhausting, frustrating, and dangerous. The previous Caladan dukes had managed a single group of people, a single planet — but Paul had to shoulder the burden of so many planets that he could not name them all without calling upon his Mentat training.

Henceforth, he decided that he would delegate more of these responsibilities to Alia. She seemed to have a different relationship with her conscience, a way to compartmentalize what must be done. His sister, with all her past lives and remembered experiences, could govern with a firm, stern hand. And because the people were frightened of the girl’s strangeness, they would see her more as a priestess than a ruler. Alia could use that to her advantage.

One morning, before the first group of supplicants was allowed into the heavily guarded chamber, Princess Irulan appeared before Paul, asking permission to speak with him. Beside the throne, Stilgar and Alia looked at Irulan with their usual suspicions, but Paul understood her motives better and trusted her to behave according to established patterns.

She wore a look of concern and puzzlement on her face. “My Husband, I have received a message from a Guild courier. It was addressed to me, asking for my intercession.” Frowning, she extended the cylinder to Paul.

Intrigued, he took the document, noted the intricate seals that Irulan had already broken open. As Paul read, Irulan explained to Stilgar and Alia, “Lady Margot Fenring requests a favor.”

“Lady Margot?” Alia asked, drawing upon her mother’s memories as well as her own. “We have heard nothing from her in years.”

The Count and his Lady, after initially joining Shaddam IV in exile on Salusa Secundus following the Battle of Arrakeen, had remained only a brief time before embarking on their own and disappearing from view — apparently with no love lost between them and the fallen Emperor. Paul knew the Count was quite a dangerous character, a schemer to rival the most Machiavellian of the Bene Gesserits or the Harkonnens.

Paul read the message, feeling a flicker of warning in his prescient senses, though nothing distinct. Much about Hasimir Fenring — another failed Bene Gesserit attempt to breed a Kwisatz Haderach — had always been murky to him. “It is odd that they took sanctuary among the Tleilaxu,” he said. “I did not foresee this request. I had forgotten that Lady Margot has a daughter.”

“And what does this woman want from you, Usul?” Stilgar asked.

After nearly drowning on Jericha, the faithful naib had returned to Arrakis and now chose to serve directly at the side of Muad’Dib, as Minister of State. Stilgar had decided his true worth was in leadership, rather than fighting on distant planets, and Paul had to agree.

The Emperor set the message cylinder aside. “She asks permission to send her daughter Marie here, wants her to be raised and trained in our Imperial court.”

Irulan was clearly unsettled by the idea. “I do not understand why.”

“A better question is, why would you be suspicious of her, rather than advocating it?” Alia countered. “Count Fenring was a close friend of your father’s, while Lady Margot is a prominent Bene Gesserit. Wasn’t Margot a boon companion to your own mother, Lady Anirul?”

“And to your mother as well,” the Princess replied. “But I am always troubled by things I do not understand.”

“Is Count Fenring the natural father of the child?” Paul asked.

“Lady Margot does not suggest otherwise. I cannot tell either way.”

“And if Count Fenring is no longer with Shaddam, was there truly a falling-out between them, or is this part of an overall scheme?” Alia added. “Our spies have suggested that the Count has a great deal of antipathy toward Shaddam. Is the rift real, or merely an act?”

Paul remembered the dire insult and the obvious coolness that Fenring had exhibited toward the Emperor in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Arrakeen, while Paul himself had felt an odd sort of kinship with Fenring. Though they were entirely dissimilar men, he and the Count had certain exceptional qualities in common.

“Salusa Secundus is not a pleasant place,” Stilgar said. “Or so I have heard.”

“Comforts mean little to Count Fenring,” Paul said. “For years, he served on Arrakis as the Imperial Spice Minister. I suspect that he left Salusa, not because he wanted a finer palace, but because he could no longer stand being with Shaddam.”

Irulan’s demeanor hardened. “My father often took action before he possessed all the facts. He simply expected the rest of the Imperium to bow to his will, whether or not his decisions were wise or rational. He often acted without consulting Count Fenring, and as a result got himself into terrible debacles. The Count grew tired of cleaning up after my father’s messes.”

With a sigh, Paul leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees.

“The question remains — how shall we respond to this request? Lady Margot wishes to send her little daughter here for schooling, and no doubt to make connections. The girl is only six years old. Could their motives be as straightforward as wanting to get into my good graces, since they abandoned Shaddam IV?”

“Occam’s Razor suggests that may be the real answer,” Irulan said. “The simplest answer does make perfect sense.”

“Occam’s Razor is dull where the Bene Gesserit are concerned,” Alia said. “I know from the clatter in my head that they have always schemed and plotted.”

Paul lifted the filmy sheets again and read the words Margot had imprinted there: “‘Emperor Paul-Muad’Dib Atreides, I humbly and respectfully request a favor. Though my husband has chosen to take refuge among the Tleilaxu, I am convinced that this is not the environment in which our daughter should be raised. The misogynist Tleilaxu culture is reprehensible in my eyes. I ask leave for Marie to come to your court in Arrakeen and spend the remainder of her formative years there, if her company should prove acceptable to you.’”

Paul set down the sheets. “Then Lady Margot also reminds me — unnecessarily — that she was the one who left a message in the conservatory of the Arrakeen Residency to warn my mother of a hidden Harkonnen threat. There is no disputing that, or the accuracy of her information.”

“She has placed a water-debt on you,” Stilgar said. The old naib’s brow furrowed, and he ran his fingers along the dark beard on his chin. “And yet, I cannot understand why she would offer us such an important hostage.”

“That works both ways,” Paul said. “We may have the little girl as a hostage, but we are also allowing a potential spy into the royal court.”

Irulan was surprised. “She’s only a child, my Lord. Just six years old.”

“I am just a little girl too,” Alia said, letting the rest of them draw their own comparisons and conclusions. Then she crossed her legs and sat down on the step in front of the Lion Throne, adjusting her child-sized black aba robe. “I think I would like to have a playmate, Brother.”

2

Paul hadn’t slept well for seven nights in a row, and he couldn’t hide the fact from Chani. She got up in the still darkness and came to stand by him on the balcony. Paul had passed through the moisture seal and wore only a loose, lightweight tunic in the dry air, wasting water. No stillsuit. Chani did the same.

When did I forget the basic lessons of Arrakis? he thought. Just because I am Emperor, does that mean water costs me nothing?

Listening to the humming restlessness of the vast city, he absorbed the vibrations in the air, the mixture of scents that filled every breath, unfiltered by stillsuit nose plugs. Arrakeen reminded him of an insect hive, filled with countless skittering subjects, all needing someone else to think for them, to decide for them, to command them.

He looked up into the night sky, saw the stars and imagined all the worlds out there, all the battles still taking place. With a faint smile, he recalled something Irulan had added to one of her stories, an obvious yet mythic fabrication — that at the moment of Duke Leto’s death, a meteor had streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan….

“It pains me to see you so troubled every night, Beloved.” He turned to Chani, let out a long sigh. “My Sihaya, the people trouble me. I have known since childhood that this must come to pass, and I wanted them to trust me, to join me in this journey, to cooperate instead of forcing me to become a tyrant. Now they obey not because it is the right thing to do for the ultimate good of humanity, but because Muad’Dib commands it. If I walked out in the streets during any hour of the day, crowds would form and demand incessantly ‘Guide us, my Lord! Guide us!’ Is that what humanity needs, the danger of relying on a charismatic leader?”

“Perhaps you need guidance yourself, Usul,” Chani said quietly, stroking his dark hair away from his ear. “The guidance of Shai-Hulud. Perhaps you need to remember what it means to be a Fremen. Go out in the desert, summon a worm, and make your own hajj.”

He turned to kiss her on the mouth. “As always, you make me see clearly. Only in the desert can a man’s thoughts be still enough for him to think.” This was exactly what both Paul Atreides and the Emperor Muad’Dib needed.

LEAVING ALIA BEHIND behind as his delegate, he granted her the authority to make the appropriate decisions and perform necessary court functions, with Stilgar positioned as the girl’s adviser and protector (not that she needed one). Paul had offered to take Chani along on his journey, but after studying his face for a long moment, she declined. “You require solitude and stillness, Usul. You and the desert have much to say to each other.”

Sometimes she thought in ways that did not occur to him, as if her mind filled an essential portion of the container of his life. Their relationship was far more than that of a man and a woman, or of kindred spirits, or of any of the usual cliches. The feelings they held for each other stretched across the eons of human existence.

As the sun rose, he took a ‘thopter beyond the broken Shield Wall, past the water trenches that kept the deep-desert worms at bay, and landed at the edge of the vast, open desert. Unfortunately, though he had intended to depart alone, without ceremony, an entourage of assistants, advisers, and gawking observers soon followed. Korba transmitted that he had summoned them to provide Muad’Dib with the fanfare he deserved.

Ignoring them, dwelling on his own concerns, he turned his back on the unwelcome crowd and walked away from his landed ‘thopter, trudging out onto the dunes where he could summon a worm. He glanced over his shoulder and was dismayed to see eight ‘thopters and perhaps a hundred people, some dressed in desert fashion, some wearing the robes of the Qizara priesthood. At least a third of them did not even wear stillsuits.

Korba should know better. When had it changed that people would venture out to the desert as if attending a parade? Paul felt that the purity of the sands had already been lost. The Fremen were so enamored with their continual string of Jihad victories that they failed to recognize the loss of their heritage, the loss of their very souls.

Paul planted a thumper, winding the clockwork mechanism and setting the pendulum to make the rhythmic lump-lump-lump. Although he had done this many times, he still felt awe at the experience. He was an offworlder, yet he was also a wormrider who had proved himself among the Fremen. He had raided the Harkonnens many times. Back then, unlike now, the enemy had been clearly defined, as had victory.

In his Jihad he had offered larger and larger rewards for bringing down Earl Memnon Thorvald, whose rebellion continued to flare up, employing more desperate measures and unexpectedly violent tactics that reminded Paul of the defeated Viscount Hundro Moritani. But the Fedaykin seemed to relish having a persistent enemy to fight. Their outward-looking hatred bound them as a unit.

Behind him by the ‘thopters, some of the observers actually applauded his rote actions in calling a worm, as if he were giving a performance just for them. The thumper continued its droning rhythm. Paul waited, listening for the hiss of sand made by a behemoth worm, scanning for the faint ripple of dunes stirred by underground movement.

The thumper continued to pulse.

The distant audience began to mutter, surprised at what they saw. Finally the clockwork spring ran out, and the thumper fell silent. No sandworm had come. They would call it an inauspicious omen.

Paul lifted the counterweight, rewound the device, and jammed it deeper into the sand before he activated the syncopating mechanism again. He felt awkward. So many people read meanings into everything he did. Muad’Dib didn’t want this.

And now he heard the people continuing to murmur, wondering if Shai-Hulud had abandoned Muad’Dib. Paul began to grow angry, not just at them but at himself. Shai-Hulud did not perform for audiences!

Then, just before the thumper fell silent for a second time, he noticed a stirring of the dunes. A shallow trough ran toward him as a sandworm raced toward the sonic disturbance. His pulse quickened.

Korba saw it next, and the people emitted a loud cheer. The fools! Their noise would distract the creature, and the small barrier of rocks on which they had gathered would never stop a large sandworm.

Paul grabbed his ropes, his Maker hooks, his spreaders. When the sand parted and a huge rounded head exploded upward, he stepped back and clanged his worm hooks together to make a loud reverberating sound, seeking to tug the creature’s attention away from the observers who had finally fallen silent in terror and awe.

“Shai-Hulud! To me!” Paul planted his feet properly, gauging the worm’s approach, and at just the right moment, hooked one of the ring segments. He clasped the rope and scrambled up the worm’s pebbly side.

This was only a medium-sized sandworm. It would serve him well enough, without being impressive, though he was sure the observers would describe it as the greatest ever seen on Dune. Without a backward glance, paying no heed to the cheers and praise, Paul scrambled onto the beast’s back. He inserted the spreaders in a practiced manner, opened the worm segments to the sensitive flesh beneath, and struck the worm’s head with his goad. Anchoring himself with his ropes, he turned the beast and raced out onto the open dunes, spraying sand and dust.

He was comforted by the solitude and heat, and the odors of sulfur and cinnamon that clung to the creature. As the worm raced off, Paul’s conscience came clamoring after him, even into the deepest desert. Kilometers rushed past, but Paul Atreides could not leave his demons behind.

3

After her brother went into the deep desert, Alia sat on a throne that was much too large for her. Because of her small size and innocent appearance, she embodied a dramatic contradiction — generations of wisdom and a stern hand of justice wrapped up in an unprepossessing form.

The people viewed Muad’Dib as a godlike figure, but they spared some of their religious awe for Alia, too. Supplicants came before her without knowing which of her many moods they might face, aware that they were taking a risk.

Two legates from the recently surrendered world of Alahir arrived in stiff and formal uniforms that looked impossibly hot and monstrously uncomfortable, designed for the airy coolness of their planet rather than the dry heat of Dune. They brought gifts and pleaded for an audience with the Holy Emperor Muad’Dib. After being told he was unavailable, they walked uncertainly to present themselves to his sister Alia instead. When the two men glimpsed the little girl on the throne they grew indignant, assuming this was some insult to their world and their leader. “We have traveled on a Guild Heighliner across many star systems to see the Emperor.”

Alia did not move from her throne. “I speak for my brother. You will see me, or you will see no one.”

The lead Alahir ambassador had a long slender neck and a high piping voice. “But we have sworn our loyalty. We are faithful subjects of His Holiness. It is our right to see him.”

With a gesture and few terse words, Alia sent the men away under heavy Fremen guard. Despite their protestations, they were escorted back to their frigate and taken up to the Heighliner. By her command, they would make the long journey back to their planet before they would be allowed to turn around and make the journey all over again, this time with more humility. She dispatched a dour Fremen guard to accompany them and make certain the two actually returned home and set foot on Alahir.

Some observers in the crowded audience chuckled at her heavy-handed treatment of the men. Others, seeing her stern and uncompromising mood, slinked away without airing their grievances. At one time, Alia might have had guards follow those men to determine what they had been about, but now she presumed they had simply realized that their cases were weak or frivolous. She wished many more of them would melt away like that and solve their own problems — exactly as her brother wished.

The next supplicant was a tired-looking man whose face showed the deep, sunburned creases of a hard life. His entire body seemed to be a callus, yet he wore pride and self-esteem like armor. Though not neatly barbered, he kept his hair combed and tied back. His garments were poor, but had been meticulously mended; only Alia’s sharp eye noted the signs of wear. This was not a careless man.

He was the accuser, and the two defendants in his case looked much more careless and sloppy, though they wore finer clothes and scented their bodies with oils and colognes. The weathered-looking man stepped forward and gave a salute from the Jihad, as if Alia were actually Paul. She liked that.

“I fought faithfully in Muad’Dib’s Jihad,” he said. “I stood on the battlefields of five planets, including Ehknot. My commander discharged me with honors and provided me with a pension. That should have been enough for a home in Carthag, enough to support my wives until I could establish myself as a stonemason.” He glared at the pair of defendants. “But these men took all of my money.”

“He lost his money, yes, Mistress Alia — but he lost it fairly,” cried the pudgier of the two men.

Alia turned to the accuser for more information, and he said, “I gambled with them. We played the game of tarot dice, and they took everything from me.”

Now Alia frowned. “When one gambles, one risks losing. That is the way of it.”

“When one gambles, Mistress Alia, one knows the rules and expects fair play. But these men cheated.”

“We did no such thing!” the second defendant said.

“Just because you lost a game does not mean they cheated,” Alia pointed out.

“They cheated. I swear it on my honor, on my life… on my water!”

Alia sat back. “You say these men cheated you. They say they did not. How am I to determine who is correct?” In fact, Alia could tell. Even without truthsense she would have known that the two exceedingly nervous defendants were hiding something, while the accuser did not waver in his conviction and righteous indignation.

She sprang from her throne and trotted down the stone steps, jaunting like a little girl, intentionally, to disorient them. “I will play a game with these men. Show me the tarot dice that were used.” Reluctantly, they withdrew the cubes, and Alia squatted on the floor. “Come beside me, and we will play.” The two defendants looked extremely nervous, but they could not refuse her request.

She held the five dice in her small hand. Each face bore a different coded image that had symbolic meanings far beyond the game itself. These dice would not be noticeably weighted one way or the other, but she realized they had been altered somehow to give the owners a distinct advantage. The rules of even the basic game of tarot dice were complicated, but Alia knew them in detail. She rolled first before the men could complain: leaving face up two wands, a scythe, a star, and a water pitcher.

“An auspicious omen!” one of the men declared, as if out of habit. “Now let us place our wagers.”

Alia harbored no doubt that the first roll was designed to be positive, to lure a player into more extravagant betting. Hustlers. The two defendants shuddered, looking gray. They placed their wagers — modest ones — and then tolled, building upon the prophecy, lining up their omens. They didn’t know whether they should try to win or lose, but because Alia demanded larger and larger bets from them in front of the eager audience, they could not simply surrender. She refused to let them withdraw.

During this, their accuser stood with his arms crossed over his chest, glowering down at the play, while other audience members cheered her on, offering their advice.

Though Alia could not control the mechanics of the dice rolls, she gradually began to realize how these men were interpreting — and manipulating — the results. As for herself, she had a far more interesting means of cheating. With glimpses of prescience, Alia could determine how most of the rolls would come out. Even with the dice subtly weighted to give unexpected results, she could frequently see which dice to hold back and which ones to play, then place bold wagers accordingly. “Luck” was with her in a more concrete way than any other gambler could imagine.

The two terrified defendants could not stop the game. The audience murmured with appreciation, but not surprise, as Alia won again and again, defying the rolls that would be expected from untainted dice. Over the course of the game, the perceptive members of the crowd recognized that these men had somehow altered the pieces to their advantage, and that even so Alia was thwarting them. Her gradual swell of winnings forced them to raise their bets and put more of their personal fortunes on the line. Guards stood around the room to ensure that no one left.

Finally, both men raised their hands, sobbing. “We are ruined, Mistress Alia. You have taken all of our wealth. We have nothing more to gamble.”

“You have your lives,” she pointed out. “Now, would you care to wager them?”

“Please, no! We beg you!”

She let them squirm for a few moments, then stood up. “All right, we’ll end this game. The guards will accompany you to ensure that you pay what you owe me. Since I won so many times, I cannot claim you were cheating.” Some members of the audience chuckled at her clearly facetious statement, for the evidence of the dice had been quite plain. She turned to the accuser, meeting his troubled expression. “From my winnings, I will repay half of what you have lost — but only half. The rest goes into the Imperial treasury.” She raised her voice. “All of life is a gamble, and opponents will not always play by neat and tidy rules. If you would participate in the game, you must be prepared to lose.”

The old veteran seemed more than satisfied with her unique form of justice. The three left by separate doors, and Alia returned to her high throne….

A SHORT WHILE later, Alia received word that Lady Margot Fenring and her daughter had arrived at the Arrakeen Spaceport and were being escorted to the Citadel of Muad’Dib. Stilgar and Irulan had already discussed with her how best to receive their visitors.

Lady Margot did not bring a large entourage, arriving as a traveler of no particular importance on a Heighliner bound from the Bene Tleilax worlds via Richese, Junction, and a number of unremarkable planets, until reaching Dune. Stilgar guided her into the throne room, and the supplicants parted for them.

Margot Fenring was beautiful, trained to use every bit of her appearance and personal magnetism to achieve the Sisterhood’s aims. In this visit, though, Alia wondered whose aims were at play. Her own mother had made different choices. Was Lady Margot content to be a pawn for the Bene Gesserit? And how did little Marie fit into the game plan? Something to do with breeding, no doubt.

Alia looked down with a bright smile, and her eyes met the other girl’s. Marie appeared so young, though Alia knew that this was how she herself looked to strangers.

“We present ourselves to the Emperor’s throne,” Count Fenring’s wife said, bowing slightly.

Stilgar stepped up to the dais, acting as a chamberlain. He spoke to Alia out of the side of his mouth in Chakobsa, the ancient tongue of the desert, though Margot Fenring could understand him as easily as Alia could. “I don’t like this witch or her daughter.”

“You have already made your feelings plain, Stilgar.” Alia raised her voice to make sure the audience could hear her. “It will be good for me to have someone my own age at court. Princess Irulan laments that I should act as a child more often.” She stepped down to meet Marie, who stood facing her with bright and exceedingly intelligent eyes, exquisite features, and perfect manners.

“My brother is unavailable right now,” Alia said to Lady Margot. “We do not know when he will return, but I am happy to welcome you to our court. I grant our protection to you and your daughter.”

“Thank you, your Royal Eminence,” Margot said. A rather startling title to use, but Alia did not dispute it.

Alia then turned her attention back to the little girl. “I’m very pleased to have you here, Marie. We’ll have so much fun together.” She indicated the uppermost step of the dais, just below her throne. “Come, sit next to me and watch as I continue to dispense a mixture of Fremen and Atreides justice.”

4

Of all deaths, one is the most difficult. This was the death of his name, of his family honor, of everything that mattered to him as a man and a leader. The desert had made him see that.

With the face mask of his stillsuit thrown back, Paul sat alone, gazing out across the sea of dunes with the blue-blue eyes of a Fremen. The night’s coolness still clung to the shadowed pocket, but it would vanish rapidly with the awakening day. He had spent the night sitting motionless on a large flat stone, absorbing the rich aroma of windblown, powdery spice. Al-Lat, the golden sun, was just rising over an escarpment, but he did not yet feel its warmth. A deep desert chill had settled into his bones, and into his thoughts.

Though his body had hardly moved, his mind had ranged far.

The course he had chosen for mankind was difficult. Billions of people had already been killed in his name — some justifiably, many not. Wave after wave of violence came as his warrior legions surged out into space, hunting any enemy of Muad’Dib, whether real or imagined. Allowing such horrendous damage to be done in his name had left an indelible mark on his soul. But it was his terrible purpose.

He remembered the joy of returning home from Grumman when he was a boy, the smell of the Caladan seas and the drifting cries of seabirds. Not so long ago, Paul had been the proud son of a nobleman, heir to the Atreides tradition, destined to be a Duke.

How could I have forgotten Caladan so easily? he wondered. Dismissing those people my father loved so well? No one should consider himself that important. Duncan Idaho and Thufir Hawat would have given him a powerful dose of humility. Had Gurney himself given up on Paul, retiring from the uncontrollable Jihad to find a bit of peace on Caladan?

Paul felt like a man tumbling off a cliff, taking everyone he loved and all of his followers with him. He heard the harsh, unsettling cry of a bird. Looking up into the brightening sky, he watched two vultures drifting overhead, as if examining him with interest. Presently, they flapped their wings and moved on. Paul was not dead, but he was dying inside.

A distant and mechanical sound intruded, and he saw an ornithopter circling to the east. With the sun behind it, the operator was trying to avoid being noticed. Undoubtedly, Muad’Dib’s Fedaykin had picked up his location and were monitoring him, making certain he was safe.

No one leaves me alone.

Korba’s motives were transparent and refreshingly understandable. The Fedaykin leader had used Paul to broker his own power, his own religion… but the reverse was true as well, and Paul had exploited others like him, those who sought personal power through the new order. By fanning the flames of his holy war, the divine Emperor had intended to purge the old ways of the Imperium and set up a future in which there would be no more wars. Throughout history, however, many others had used the same excuse….

In embarking upon that terrible but necessary course, he had known from the outset that it would not be possible for him to remain a purely heroic figure. Never had any one person held such absolute power. It was inevitable that he would become hated, especially when he did what prescience demanded.

He had already seen a turning point in the wildfires of rebellion around the Imperium, blazes that kept flaring up no matter how hard his soldiers tried to extinguish them. Opposition was to be expected, and Memnon Thorvald wasn’t particularly competent or effective, yet he provided a constant reminder that not everyone worshipped the sand on which Paul-Muad’Dib walked. Assassination attempts and conspiracies would spring up for as long as Muad’Dib ruled, and one day there would be a point at which the fires of rebellion would rise higher than his own light. A funeral pyre would burn for House Atreides.

Ultimately, out of the ashes, history would be written by the survivors, and no matter how many volumes Irulan left behind about the Emperor Paul-Muad’Dib, he would be reviled as a monster… until someone worse came along. Was that his true legacy? He heaved a great sigh of resignation. Chani knew of his pain over this. So long as some people realized why Muad’Dib had done what he did, all was not lost.

Now alone, Paul considered wandering off into the desert and vanishing. His skills were sufficient that he could avoid the Fedaykin indefinitely. But he could not bear the thought of leaving Chani, of never seeing her again. It was not a path he could take.

Sunlight warmed the spice sands around him, causing their rich cinnamon odor to seep into his mind, enhancing his consciousness. Multiple futures shifted in and out of his view. Prescience was always with him, sometimes as a whisper, sometimes as a shout. Paul saw countless circuitous paths, any one of which could be triggered by the tiniest act.

In his mind’s eye, he saw marching armies in every color and cut of uniform, their varied weapons dripping with blood, surging across vast sectors of space. He could barely discern his own legions in their midst, so dwarfed were they by the shadowy shapes of mankind’s future.

Across Paul’s melange-saturated mind, myriad possibilities spun and clashed and tangled, then fused into one path of certainty. Memnon Thorvald. Paul saw Guild Heighliners traveling clandestinely between planets, loading the secret battle fleets of Landsraad nobles and delivering them to a staging area in orbital space over the rebellious earl’s planet. He recognized the indigo-and-yellow colors of House Thorvald, along with the banners of CHOAM, the Spacing Guild, and even golden lion crests and blue griffins on a handful of ships. Though both House Corrino and House Harkonnen had been devastated at the beginning of Muad’Dib’s Jihad, their stubborn, ragtag remnants still resisted him.

In his vision Paul watched Thorvald receive sanctuary and shielding from the Guild, aided by CHOAM — both of which saw the turmoil of the Jihad as bad for commerce. Normal warfare provided numerous economic advantages for the trading conglomerate, but Paul’s fanatics did not follow predictable lines. They caused damage without the compensation of increased profits.

Paul suddenly knew what was different. These families allied against him had been emboldened by Bludd’s spectacular hunter-seeker attack in the Celestial Audience Chamber. Thorvald had continued to take credit for the act, though he’d had nothing to do with it.

No longer content to be seen as mere gadflies and annoyances, these rebels had gathered their resources to make a concerted strike. They had carefully selected a target that would hurt Muad’Dib deeply.

They intended to destroy Caladan.

He saw that all of the ships carried aboard two Guild Heighliners would be disgorged over the ocean world. Thorvald would unleash his most devastating weaponry, specifically targeting Castle Caladan, the Lady Jessica, Gurney Halleck, and Cala City. Everything Paul remembered and loved from his childhood, and all that Duke Leto had held so dear, would be sterilized.

They’re going to destroy Caladan!

Paul tried to shake himself free of the vision, the nightmare. With sand dropping through the hourglass of the future, he could not afford to sit and watch the remaining details. He had to return. He had to stop this.

For several long moments, his eyes would not open, and he could not hear or feel anything. Finally, in bright sunlight, he gazed out on the sands and saw the ornithopter flying in the sky, searching for him. Paul rose to his feet and signaled it. Time to stop hiding.

He shook with fury.

5

Because of her unique background, Alia could immediately see how peculiar a child Marie was. She had the demeanor of something else about her.

After Lady Margot had departed to rejoin her husband, leaving her daughter behind in the care of Muad’Dib, Alia delved within her Other Memories as they became accessible to her. She reviewed Bene Gesserit training scattered throughout her mother’s past, as well as some of the interconnected Fremen lives Jessica had obtained from the ancient Sayyadina Ramallo. Alia knew the Sisterhood’s tricks in honing and shaping a young girl’s personality, and Lady Margot Fenring was herself an adept. No doubt she had shared that wisdom with her daughter. In addition, Marie had been raised under strange Tleilaxu oppression, and Alia, even with all of her inborn pasts, still knew nothing about those closed worlds or the cloaked society of the Tleilaxu.

Months ago, Princess Irulan had admonished Alia to find a childhood of her own, so she had decided to try. Now that she had a playmate, she attempted to wall off the inner voices in order to ignore those myriad other lives and their incessant, often contradictory, advice. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Usually, the voices grew quiet.

Alia had discovered how to create youthful experiences for herself, and Marie did the same. “I have never had playmates my own age, either,” the other girl said. “We were kept isolated among the Tleilaxu, and they do not have children… in the normal way.”

Alia could remember uncounted births, even her very own. But she was intrigued to learn that the Tleilaxu reproduced differently, somehow. “How do they do it, then?”

Marie just shrugged. “They wouldn’t tell us.” That, Alia decided, was a mystery she might have to look into.

The two spent much of their days exploring the citadel, occupying themselves with games such as hide-and-seek. With so vast a complex in which to conceal themselves, the diversion quickly grew untenable, until they agreed to restrict the areas in which they could hide to certain reception wings and banquet rooms. They also enjoyed playing tricks on the ever-increasing number of amazon guards, Fremen-trained women among the palace staff who were assigned to watch over Alia. The female guards responded with great awkwardness to the games, not sure how to treat the girls.

As the two became more comfortable with each another, Marie pressed her companion about what her childhood had been like in the Fremen sietch, living in caves, wearing a stillsuit every day. With a gleam in her eye, Alia replied, “I shall show you a game Fremen children often play. You’ll find it amusing.”

Marie lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Let’s give it a try.”

ONCE THE WIFE of Jamis, Harah had been a battle prize won by young Paul Atreides, and then willingly taken by Stilgar. She was a consummate Fremen woman, elevated by Stilgar to be first among his wives. Despite her traditions and her own superstitions, Harah had been one of the few in sietch who was not terrified by the strange child Alia. Harah had given the girl her love and attention, rather than calling her Abomination and muttering that she be put to death.

When Stilgar returned from the Jihad battlefields, glad to be back in the pure desert, Harah was his source of strength, his anchor. She was not a meek woman; in fact, Harah frightened Stilgar’s other wives and any Fremen, male or female, who dared to get in her way. Now she came to him with a facial expression as dangerous as a Coriolis storm. “Alia is gone. She and the Fenring child have disappeared. I suspect treachery.”

“You always suspect treachery, Harah. You know Alia better than anyone, and you know she can take care of herself.”

Harah stamped her foot. “But I do not know that other girl. She could be a weapon programmed by the Tleilaxu or Count Fenring or any of Muad’Dib’s enemies.”

Stilgar looked into her eyes and saw the genuine concern. Harah was not an alarmist.

“I have already searched the likely places,” she said. “I have dispatched the household staff to search as well, and told them to forsake their other duties until the children are found.” Stilgar felt a cold hand grip his heart, as Harah added in a low, warning voice, “When Muad’Dib returns from the desert, I would not like to be the one to tell him his sister has been lost.”

“I will summon the guards and the Fedaykin. Chani will lead them, I am sure.”

FOR NEARLY A full day, swarms of desperate searchers pushed through every corridor, every wing, and every chamber in the huge Citadel of Muad’Dib. In their scrutiny they discovered crimes and indiscretions, numerous hidden vaults, and a great deal of material that could be used as blackmail, all of which Korba promptly seized and locked away in private Qizarate files.

But they found no sign of Alia or Marie, not a trail or a clue. The two had vanished.

Search parties combed the outlying districts of Arrakeen, forcing their way into dwellings, ransacking merchants’ warehouses and marching through places of worship built by the countless sects that had sprung up to honor and revere Muad’Dib. They found many things, but no sign of the missing children.

Stilgar was sickened, expecting at any moment to receive a ransom demand or, worse, Alia’s severed head sent in a package to the citadel. Stilgar authorized the Emperor’s treasury to offer a breathtaking reward for information about Alia’s whereabouts, and word spread around the city of Arrakeen. Orinthopters flew overhead and out into the desert in tightly arranged search patterns, craft that were fitted with the most advanced scanning technology. But the daily winds would quickly erase any footprints the children might have left.

Finally Stilgar received a message from a poor desert family that lived in one of the squalid villages at the fringe of the Shield Wall, where breezes blew sand into the sheltered basin and radiation from Muad’Dib’s atomics still lingered at barely tolerable levels. Children were often seen playing at the edge of the desert. This family had reported noticing two girls that they did not recognize.

Stilgar barked a command that the family be taken as guests to the citadel, so they could receive their reward if the information proved accurate. He climbed into a small ‘thopter himself and seized the controls. When the articulated wings began to shudder, he did not wait for the other troopers to scramble into their own aircraft. He took off from the citadel landing pad before the others even started their engines. The rest of the vessels swooped after him, then concentrated their search in the appropriate area. The ‘thopters swarmed out over the dunes, looking for any sign of figures.

Stilgar went out several kilometers, though he was certain that Alia had sense enough not to go too far into the deep desert. On the other hand, the child was exceedingly unpredictable. Though he had no evidence, he would not have been surprised if Alia knew how to summon a worm and ride out into the open bled. She could have taken Marie with her, perhaps to find Paul on his long pilgrimage. The girls might have thought it would be fun.

At last, he spotted two small figures huddled in the sand. The winds had died down, and their tiny footprints left a centipede-like path along the crest of a dune, then down into a shallow valley. The ‘thopters landed like a full-scale invasion force, and the two girls stood up, shielding their eyes and ears from the blowing sand and the noise of engines. Stilgar sprang out of the ‘thopter even before the articulated wings had slowed. He strode forward, his face a mixture of anger and relief.

The children had sticks, a literjon of water, Fremkits, a stilltent, and the basic essentials for surviving for days out in the desert. Marie held up her stick, at the end of which dangled a squirming, gelatinous mass.

“Hello, Stilgar,” Alia said in a carefree voice, as if he and all the ‘thopters had simply come to bring the children a platter of honeyed spice cakes. “We’re catching sandtrout, just like Fremen children do.”

Marie played with the primitive creature she had caught, stretching its body membrane. Stilgar came forward, looking furious enough to strike Alia, and swept her up in an awkward bear hug. “Never do that again, child!”

Now that he was no longer worried, Stilgar felt a strange sense of satisfaction about the incident that at first he could not articulate. Finally, he was startled to realize that this bad decision, this foolish activity, was something a normal child might do. Perhaps some small part of Alia was learning to be an ordinary little girl after all, and that wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

But a normal child she was not. And neither was her new playmate.

6

On the way home from his desert pilgrimage, Paul walked through the streets of Arrakeen, unrecognized in his dusty traditional garb. He had felt the murmur of crowds and the anonymous press of people all around him. The solitude and stillness of the desert rapidly slipped away from him. As soon as he returned, people would demand to speak with him about all those supposedly crucial matters that had been held in abeyance during his sojourn.

But he had more important matters to take care of: He had to stop Memnon Thorvald before the rebel leader launched his attack on Caladan. Those were Paul’s people. Duke Leto’s people — Atreides people. They might imagine that he had forgotten about them, but he would prove otherwise.

Paul-Muad’Dib entered the citadel unannounced and weary, his face, hands, and stillsuit covered with fine dust and sand. Although he was angered by what the spice vision had shown him and burning with the knowledge that he had to stop Thorvald’s hateful plan, he went first to see Chani. He had to impose at least a moment of sanity on his thoughts before he plunged into violence again.

She welcomed him in their quarters, delighted to see him back. Irulan came to the chamber door a short while later, and Paul realized that her network of informants must be quite impressive. No one else had been told of his return.

“Irulan,” he said, since she was the nearest one available who could make things happen, “summon Chatt the Leaper. Tell him I demand to see a Guild representative immediately, someone who can take me up to whatever Heighliner is above us so that I may address the Navigator directly.” He let his simmering anger show in his voice. “If no one with sufficient authority is here within the hour, I shall decrease the Guild’s spice allotment by five percent for the next Standard Year, and dock them another five percent for every further hour of delay.”

Irulan was shocked. “But Husband, you are not presentable… your dirty clothes, your stillsuit. You cannot meet with an ambassador dressed like that.”

“Muad’Dib can do as he wishes,” Chani said, her voice icy as a polar wind. She had stiffened as soon as Irulan entered. “Unpresentable to whom? All come to him. All bow before him.”

Paul said, “I concentrate more easily with dust on my hands and while wearing my stillsuit. Send for the Guild representative, and get Stilgar to the throne room if he isn’t already on his way.”

By the time Muad’Dib and Chani reached the audience chamber, word of the Emperor’s wrath had spread through the fortress’s halls. Administrators rushed to see how they could serve him, while others (either more fearful or more sensible) made themselves scarce.

Alia was already there with Marie Fenring; the two girls had secretive smiles on their faces. “My brother is very angry at someone,” she whispered to her companion.

With only two minutes to spare in the deadline, a lanky, lantern-jawed man in a gray Spacing Guild robe stumbled breathless into the audience chamber. He was accompanied by the quiet, almost sullen Chatt the Leaper, Paul’s liaison with the Guild. The gray-robed man introduced himself as Olar and made an exaggerated bow before the enormous emerald throne. “Emperor Muad’Dib demands my presence?”

“Emperor Muad’Dib requires much more than that. I must speak with you, with your Guild — and with that Navigator up there.” Paul jerked a forefinger toward the ceiling. “Get me a shuttle. I have no time for middlemen or diplomats.”

The Guild representative looked at him, aghast. Chatt remained stony, as did Stilgar. In the prolonged silence, little Marie began to giggle. Olar swallowed once, twice. “As you command, Sire.”

The Guild usually made excuses that their Navigators were never to be seen, that the security of their Heighliners was paramount, and that only certain spokesmen could respond on the Guild’s behalf. But not now. Though many Navigators were so advanced that they had difficulty communicating with primitive human minds, Paul knew they would certainly understand what he had to say. Olar would get him aboard.

Without further delay, Paul marched out of his throne room and gestured for the Guild representative to go with him. “Stilgar, you will accompany me as well. This is a military matter. I may require your knowledge and advice.”

Olar was the type of ambassador Paul preferred: Even though the man was filled with questions and his expression exhibited a great deal of alarm, he was smart enough not to voice every thought that sprang to his mind. Other more garrulous diplomats would have begged for clarification, and made excuses or apologies regardless of what the problem was.

But these Guildsmen knew damned well what they had done: how they had knowingly aided bloodthirsty rebels and were about to assist in an appalling attack on the world Paul had called home for much of his life. Seeing Muad’Dib’s mood, Olar had concluded correctly that he would get no answers, and that questions would only make matters worse.

When the shuttle was finally aboard the Heighliner and had settled into a docking clamp, a walkway extended so that Paul could disembark onto the shell decks. At the end of the walkway stood Guild security men wearing sidearms and blocking his way.

Stilgar barked, “Stand aside and remove your weapons in the presence of Muad’Dib!”

Another Guild representative, also in a gray robe, stood behind the security men like a shadow. “Apologies, Sire. For reasons of safety and security, it is Spacing Guild policy that no outsider can disturb a Navigator aboard a Heighliner. All matters must be brought before the appropriate officials. As the highest-ranking representative aboard this ship, I will be happy to deal with the Emperor’s concerns.”

“You may come with us, then, but I will speak with the Navigator.”

“Sire, perhaps I was not clear —” the man began. The security men still did not move.

Paul said, “This is my ship, as are all Guildships. Instruct your guards to stand aside immediately and tell your Navigator to anticipate my arrival, unless he would like to spend the rest of his life breathing whatever spice vapors remain in his tank, for if you defy me I will allow no further melange to leave Arrakis.”

Olar interceded. “This is an extraordinary request, but Emperor Muad’Dib so rarely makes demands upon us. I suggest we listen to what he has to say.”

The Guild official, who probably outranked Olar, scowled but gestured for the security men to stand aside. Paul strode between them, with Stilgar half a step behind. The Guildsmen led the way to the Navigator’s deck.

The Navigator was an exotic creature, enclosed in a tank of thick orange gas that reeked of melange, even through its seals. The dense cloud disguised some of the creature’s deformities — which were somehow linked to his mental enhancements — but through the thick plaz Paul could discern the bobbing, overlarge head on a wattled stalk of a neck. He had never seen a Steersman personally, but he could not waste time staring now.

“Beric,” said Olar. “Our Emperor Muad’Dib wishes to —”

Paul interjected loudly, without preamble. “I know of the plot Memnon Thorvald intends to launch against my homeworld of Caladan, and I know of the Guild’s collusion with him.”

“Sire, we have no knowledge of this whatsoever,” Olar said.

“The Spacing Guild is loyal to Muad’Dib,” stated the other official, whose name was insignificant to Paul. “We know that you control the spice, and thus control all space travel. Why would we support any rebellion?”

Beric the Guild Navigator, interestingly, said nothing.

Paul said, “With my prescience, I have seen Thorvald’s warships being taken aboard two Guild Heighliners. I have also seen that this very ship in which I stand has carried the troops and weaponry of twelve other rebel noblemen who are allied with him. Thus, I know the Guild is not only aware, but is willingly cooperating.”

“Perhaps… prescient vision… imperfect,” Beric finally said, a distorted voice through the speakers of his tank.

“And is your prescient vision imperfect, when you choose safe paths for a ship to travel?” Paul countered.

“Not… mine,” Beric said. “But prescience is…” His eerie voice trailed off, as he apparently decided not to pursue a particular line of reasoning.

Paul looked around the thick-walled chamber. The smell of recycled spice was dizzying. Indeed, in the Navigator’s presence with its folds of tangled timelines, the acuity of Paul’s predictive vision was greatly diminished. Admittedly his own prescience did not always function perfectly. In this case, however, his melange dream had shown him all of the ships and all of Thorvald’s soldiers. Without any doubt, he had seen the attack they meant to lead.

He knew.

“Would you like me to describe every one of their ships?” Paul said. “Shall I name every one of the planets where they were picked up? The Guild has willingly provided transport to those who are leading an insurrection against me. All of Thorvald’s allies will be aboard two specific Heighliners. They intend to launch an assault against Caladan — against Caladan! They want to take my mother and Gurney Halleck hostage, or kill them… and you have cooperated in this.”

Listening to the accusations, Stilgar seemed to tense, like a tightly wound spring; he clearly did not like this Navigator. The naib’s blue-within-blue gaze flicked back and forth, and he wrapped his hand around the crysknife at his waist, ready to kill if necessary.

Both Olar and the unnamed official vehemently denied the charges, but Paul would hear none of it. “These are the commands of your Emperor. The Heighliners containing Memnon Thorvald and the ships in his rebel fleet will be taken out into deep space. There, the Navigators will empty their holds. Completely. Every enemy war vessel, with all soldiers aboard, are to be stranded there. Leave them surrounded by emptiness, with no hope of finding their way home, with no extra supplies and no additional air.”

Olar bit back a yelp. “Sire, that will kill them all!”

“Yes, that will kill them all — for a start. Stil, I want you to arrange for a military assault on Lord Thorvald’s home planet. Bring as many weapons as you require — enough to sterilize that whole world. Everyone dead.”

“Sterilize?” Stilgar opened and closed his mouth, not sure what to say. Then: “Is that really necessary?”

Paul saw in the desert man’s eyes the thought of how long his people had struggled to nurture life on Dune, following the long-term vision of Pardot Kynes and his son Liet. How could Muad’Dib possibly suggest annihilating all plant and animal life on an entire planet? Now, when so much work was being done to breathe a renewed ecosystem onto Arrakis?

But Thorvald was willing to attack Caladan. And Paul’s mother. Duncan Idaho had once told him, while they were fleeing the assassin-trackers in the wilds of Caladan, “There is no room for compassion toward people who are trying to kill us.”

Worse, if the appalling Caladan attack succeeded, then other enemies might grow bolder and target additional victims the Emperor cared about, all of whom were easier to get to than he was: Chani, Alia, Stilgar, and even Irulan.

He could not allow it. The lesson must be taught — a lesson that would stop further violence. Let the perpetrators feel the pain they would have inflicted upon me.

“Sterilized, Stil. The Guild will provide transportation for whatever ships you choose to send. And when it is done” — he turned back to the Navigator in his tank — “only then will I consider forgiving you for your indiscretions.”

Olar swallowed twice more. “You cannot mean this, Sire. Ejecting those ships into deep space, sterilizing a planet —”

“Five years ago when the Emperor’s troops were here, I threatened to destroy all spice on Arrakis in order to make my point. Why should I make any lesser threat now? You have seen the ferocity of my followers. If it is meant to be, my Fremen will have no objection to staying on Dune, without space travel, completely cut off. They can survive, will survive. They don’t care if anyone else does.”

Finally, from inside his tank, Beric conceded. “What you command, my Lord, shall be done.”

Paul was gratified to note that this Navigator had the good sense to be afraid of Muad’Dib.

7

In her private rooms, Alia kept the poisonous scorpions inside their tank, mainly to protect others. Occasionally, with her door closed and the moisture seals in place, she opened the tank and let the creatures run loose, skittering into corners and under her bed. Some of them even liked to climb the stone blocks of the walls, as if trying to escape into the freedom of the desert.

Since their adventure out on the open dunes catching sandtrout, Alia and Marie had been watched much more closely. Fortunately, they had plenty of other activities with which to occupy themselves. For the past several days, they had gone back to hiding in particular sections of the vast citadel complex, each girl using logic and detective work to discover where the other might conceal herself. The amazon guards allowed them a certain freedom of movement, and they seemed to accept this childish version of Alia more easily than the frighteningly intelligent one.

Today, the two girls remained locked in Alia’s chambers, where they could talk and play in private. Having loosed her scorpions again, Alia sat on her pallet and let the creatures crawl over the blankets and climb up her arms and legs; some were in her hair.

Alia lay back and relaxed, letting the scorpions skitter over her body. “Even if they sting me, the poison will have no effect. I am a Reverend Mother. I can control my body chemistry.” She cupped one of the arachnids in the palm of her hand. It twitched its long tail, threatening to sting, but did not harm her.

Marie sat down on the bed beside her. The scorpions scuttled away, then turned about and approached cautiously. Alia warned, “I let them out only for myself. Their poison will be fatal to you if you are stung. You must be careful.”

“I am being careful, and I’m not worried.” Marie plucked one of the creatures from the blanket on Alia’s pallet. Gently, she folded its angular legs together, then set it on her forearm. Agitated, the scorpion twitched its tail back and forth, then raised its claws in a combat position. “They won’t sting me either.”

Not moving, Alia watched with curious intensity, not wanting to startle the scorpion. The one in her hair moved about as if searching for a place to nest, then came forward to peer over her bangs.

Marie picked up a second scorpion and set it on her leg, while Alia breathed evenly, fascinated. “They won’t sting me,” Marie said again, with complete confidence.

And they didn’t.

8

The face of Guild Representative Olar was somber and unreadable as he offered a cylinder to Paul — a solido holographic recording encased in ornate and costly trappings. “Muad’Dib issued his command and did not require proof from the Spacing Guild. We accept that as a measure of your trust.”

“I had no doubt you would follow my instructions,” Paul replied from a heavy chair of polished windstone. When the Emperor made no move, Stilgar accepted the gift from the Guild and regarded it curiously.

With Irulan and Chani, they were in a small, thick-walled war council room. Though Paul sensed the import of Olar’s message, he chose to meet him here in this austere, windowless place, rather than in the cavernous audience chamber with all the trouble of having security teams sweep and resweep, scanning visitors and crowds of onlookers for hidden weapons. Rumors were already rushing through the citadel and the streets of Arrakeen that the Guildsman had returned.

Olar took two respectful steps backward. “Then consider this recording neither evidence nor proof, but merely an item of interest. An Emperor should witness firsthand the absolute defeat of his enemies.”

Stilgar inserted the cylinder into a display mechanism. Images recorded by the Navigator in a distant Guild Heighliner began to unfold in the air before them. The viewfield showed the starry void of space, and the Guildship’s curved doors open to expose an immense hold. Then hundreds of warships were dropped pell-mell from docking cradles and ejected into the emptiness, as if the Heighliner had spewed them from its belly. Afterward, like a great metal whale, the craft moved on, leaving the smaller craft scattered and disoriented.

The audio was filled with comline chatter from the stranded crews and passengers: demands, curses, pleas. One of the embedded images showed Thorvald himself, with his pale skin and large silver-shot beard shaking with fury. “We paid you! We demand our passage.”

The Heighliner did not respond.

“Where are we?” Thorvald shouted. But the Heighliner merely drifted away until the cluster of rebel warships was merely a spray of sparkling lights in its wake, not unlike the stars from which the stranded people had emanated.

Left alone, in the absolute emptiness.

The projection faded, and the viewfield vanished.

In the chamber, Olar spoke. “They are in a great desert of space, and the nearest star system is eighteen parsecs distant. No one but the original Navigator can find them, Sire.”

“How long will their life-support systems last?” Irulan asked.

“A few days, at most. They were expecting only a brief passage.”

Paul’s brow furrowed as he completed his mental arithmetic. “Wait twelve days and have your Navigator retrieve the ships. When you return with the bodies — all of them — I will grant the Guild a generous reward of melange.”

Olar bowed, but not before a faint smile touched his lips.

Paul could see from the hard expression on Chani’s face that she would have inflicted a more heinous Fremen torture upon this man who had caused so much harm to the Jihad and to her beloved. But he had seen enough excesses and would not add to them unnecessarily.

Paul turned to his Minister of State. “Stilgar, see to it that this recording is widely distributed amongst my subjects. Many of them have had a taste for Thorvald’s blood for a long time.”

Next he regarded Irulan. “Prepare a message cylinder for Caladan as well. I fear I have trampled the feelings of those people. There are things I want them to know.”

WHEN THE COURIER arrived with the sealed message cylinder and its accompanying copy of the Heighliner holo recording, Jessica stood in a high tower of Castle Caladan. For a long moment, she avoided breaking the seal. It disturbed her to think that she did not really know her own son, that she could not guess what demands Paul — or perhaps it was safer to think of him as the Emperor Muad’Dib — would make of her. What Imperial plans did he have for Caladan? What if he summoned her back to Arrakis and insisted that she sit at his side? And what would happen if she refused?

Out of habit, she murmured the Litany Against Fear, then opened the cylinder. She ignored the brief formal message from Irulan and sank into a window seat to read the words Paul had written in Atreides battle language on a sheet of spice paper.

“Mother, I have not forgotten Caladan. Its people, its land and oceans are dear to me. I have done, and will continue to do, everything in my power to preserve them.”

She felt a knot form in her stomach as Paul described Thorvald’s plot to devastate Caladan. The knot tightened as she watched the recording of what he had done… and then read of his further intention.

Finally she pressed her lips together and nodded to herself. Yes, her son had asked without asking, wanting her to let the people know. She would show this message to Gurney first, and then they would do as her son wished.

AT STILGAR’S SUGGESTION, the punitive assault on Ipyr — the home planet of Memnon Thorvald — was conducted by House Atreides battleships. Thorvald’s intent to harm Caladan was a blow aimed toward Paul himself, and House Atreides would respond with indomitable force. The punishment inflicted upon Ipyr would resonate across the worlds of the Imperium.

A Heighliner carried one hundred of the largest and most powerful Atreides vessels, each loaded to capacity with weapons, explosives, highly toxic chemical bombs, defoliants, and wide-dispersal incendiaries.

Paul had never given such a frightening command before: Sterilize the world. Memnon Thorvald’s people had to be more than defeated, more than exterminated. They must be… gone.

The Atreides ships gave no warning, engaged in no negotiations, gave no quarter to the people of Ipyr. They switched off all but their battle communications systems, so no one would hear the wails of terror, the cries for mercy or, afterward, the resounding silence. The heavily armed vessels circled down, calling up charts of every single planetary settlement, and the annihilation began.

BY THE TONE of the cheering outside the Cala City stadium, Jessica knew that her announcement was exactly what the people needed to hear. In the now rarely used amphitheater that Old Duke Paulus had constructed for his gala bullfighting spectacles, Jessica spoke in a clear voice. Gurney Halleck stood beside her, wearing his best black Atreides uniform.

“Let no one believe that my son has forgotten his beloved Caladan,” Jessica said. “The galaxy knows him as its Emperor, while Fremen praise him as their Muad’Dib. He is the military leader of the most expansive Jihad the human race has experienced in more than ten thousand years… but he is also my son. And the son of your revered Duke Leto.”

Cheering, the people waved their green pennants.

Gurney gave a gruff rumble of agreement, then stepped forward to describe how Thorvald had intended to bring his rebel ships to Caladan, to burn the villages and slaughter the people, inflicting great harm on the homeworld of House Atreides.

“But my Paul has saved you,” Jessica continued. “He has protected Caladan. He will let no harm befall you.”

Inside the large arena, giant projectors had been rigged to display the images of the stranded and doomed rebel warships, left to drift in space, their air failing, food and water gone. By now, everyone aboard would be dead, their bodies retrieved by Guild vessels.

“Paul will never forget Caladan.” Jessica’s voice was soft now. “The Emperor will never forget the people he knew as a boy, the people who helped shape him into a man. He cannot be simply your Duke, but this does not mean he has turned his back on you. Paul will preserve you.

He cherishes what is beautiful about Caladan, and he will guard you with his gentle touch.”

She smiled almost beatifically. The people seemed relieved, content. Yes, they had always known how devoted House Atreides was to them and to Caladan, how benevolent a Duke could be. They would remember.

THE BOMBARDMENT OF Ipyr lasted thirty-three standard hours. Battleships crossed and recrossed the terrain, expending all of their stored weaponry, and when they were done, no building was left standing, no city or village unburned, no field able to produce a crop. The forests were gone, leaving only charred sticks and ash. The sky was a soup of caustic smoke and acidic vapors. The oceans were brown frothing sinks, poisonous to all life, land- and sea-based alike. Some of the larger weapons had set the atmosphere itself on fire.

Afterward the battleships circled in low orbit for two more days, scanning for any transmissions from survivors, any signs of life, mercilessly targeting those few remaining spots that were not completely dead. The log archives and image libraries of the one hundred ships were filled with records of the absolute devastation.

Ipyr might never again support life. It was a new scar upon the galaxy that could neither be ignored nor forgotten.

It was a message from Muad’Dib.

9

Through her private sources of information, Princess Irulan learned of the imminent arrival of a Bene Gesserit delegation from Wallach IX, but she could not ascertain the nature of their mission, only that the women intended to call upon her personally, without warning. She prepared herself. In order to maintain her hidden sources of information on Wallach IX, she would need to show just the right amount of surprise when they appeared.

The three high-level Reverend Mothers came boldly to the huge citadel, as if their foundations of power remained as firm as before the overthrow of Shaddam IV. Paul had specifically banned his nemesis Gaius Helen Mohiam from setting foot on Dune, but he allowed other members of the Sisterhood to move about with some freedom, though their political clout was substantially diminished. Unlike the Padishah Emperor, he did not need his own personal Truthsayer, nor did he call upon Reverend Mothers for advice, except for Alia and possibly his mother.

Irulan knew that the Bene Gesserit must be starving from the drastic reduction in their influence. Would they demand her cooperation in restoring them to Imperial good graces? With a terse smile, she acknowledged that would never happen. Muad’Dib already understood the Sisterhood too well.

No doubt they would whisper to her and use coded finger-language, trying to snare her into some scheme or other. Though Irulan had been raised and trained by the Bene Gesserit, she had concluded that despite their millennia of studying human nature, even they did not fully grasp who Muad’Dib was and what he could do. It was not her place to instruct them.

Perhaps she would give the Sisters a copy of her first volume in The Life of Muad’Dib….

Wearing a formal day dress, she went about her regular duties in her private portion of the citadel, inspecting a small white gazebo that was being added inside the immense conservatory, at the center of a maze of hedges and pathways. It was a perfect place for writing and contemplation. Sunlight slanted through plaz window panels high above, and she saw the glint of an ever-present surveillance device high in the branches of a tree.

At Paul’s insistence, Korba had already read every page of her current draft, marking numerous complaints and objections, but in truth he had found nothing to cause a particular uproar. She hadn’t expected him to. Irulan was adept enough to use layers upon layers of subtlety. On the whole, in fact, Korba seemed pleased with the book and impatient for the next volume to be published.

A craftsman was putting the finishing touches on the little garden structure, attaching the last of the decorative trim pieces that she had specified. In her younger years on Kaitain she’d had a private area like this, all the way back to when she was a young girl. Here on this alien world where people had to be sealed away from the elements, she hoped to recapture some connection with less troubled times.

The craftsman was quite aged, with a deeply creased face, snowy hair, and overhanging brows. His coveralls were worn and frayed, but relatively clean. He completed his task and began organizing his tools, taking great care to put each item where it belonged. Straightening, he looked at her inquisitively, seeking approval.

“I have never seen better workmanship. Muad’Dib will be pleased.” She doubted Paul would ever notice this area; the contents of her gardens remained at her own discretion, a small hint of power. A faint, respectful smile formed on the man’s face as he bowed, then departed.

She waited. It wouldn’t be long now.

Beyond the central hedge, Irulan heard the rustle of robes as her visitors negotiated the spiral maze, coming unannounced. So, they had managed to get past the guards, although the labyrinth itself had slowed their approach. Turning to the three Reverend Mothers as they arrived, she could tell they were trying not to look flustered. “Why, Sisters! I did not expect you.”

“And we did not expect to face such a gauntlet in order to gain an audience with one of our own,” said the one in the center, an oval-faced woman who appeared to be in her early twenties.

Irulan already knew the woman’s identity — Reverend Mother Genino — and her younger companions were Naliki and Osted. All three looked too young to have undergone the Agony, but already they were successful and powerful, and counted themselves among the select personal advisers to the Mother Superior herself.

Irulan offered no sympathy. “I am the wife of Emperor Muad’Dib. Security measures are unavoidable, as you well know. If you had informed me you were coming, I could have made your passage more seamless.”

“We wished to be… discreet,” said Naliki. She was a large-boned woman whose face was florid from the exertion of the walk through the complex maze.

“Ah, then a few complications are to be expected,” Irulan said. “Come, let us go where we can talk. I am interested to learn your business here.” She led the way up three steps into the small open-walled gazebo, where they all took seats on benches.

Genino shifted to pleasantries. “You are even more beautiful in person than I had heard. Fine breeding from the Corrinos, grace acquired from the Sisterhood, and confidence from being wed to an Emperor.” The small, dark eyes of this woman concealed much, but not all.

Irulan smoothed a fold on her elegant dress, then tested her hands on her lap. “I so rarely receive Bene Gesserit visitors. What brings you to Arrakis?”

“Surely, you must have guessed,” Osted said. She was the shortest of the delegation, with close-cropped auburn hair and an overlarge nose that detracted from her beauty.

Irulan allowed a bit of impatience to seep into her voice. “I am quite busy with my duties here. State the purpose of your visit, please.”

“Time is not a good thing to waste,” said Genino. “The Mother School has dispatched the three of us to help train Alia Atreides and Marie Fenring. Given the inherent potential in their bloodlines, their youthful interaction should not be left to chance. You will see that we have the appropriate access to them.”

The Princess bristled. Paul would not like this at all. “Their instruction is well in hand. I have taken a personal interest in Alia, and in Marie as well. Your assistance is not required.”

“You do not understand the importance of Margot Fenring’s daughter,” Osted warned.

“Lady Margot herself told me when she delivered the child here. I am aware that the Sisterhood closely monitored her upbringing among the Tleilaxu. And as for Alia… she could teach the three of you some things.”

With her hand sheltered in the folds of her robe, Genino used her fingers to transmit a message, assuming Irulan could not speak freely because their words were being monitored. But Irulan looked away, refusing to accept that form of communication. With a frustrated scowl, Genino spoke aloud. “Monitoring of important persons is only standard practice.”

“The Atreides daughter is an Abomination,” Naliki said. “We cannot have a pre-born contaminate the delicate balance of Marie’s education. We must intervene.”

Irulan smiled at the comment. “I see very little that is delicate about Marie Fenring.” She had her own suspicions that the child’s purpose here wasn’t entirely innocent. She suspected it had something to do with spying for the Sisterhood, with their craving for information.

Genino said, “Nevertheless, the interaction between Marie and Alia must be managed properly.”

“Managed by you?” Irulan said. “And does Lady Margot approve? Before she departed, she did not express a need or desire for any further Bene Gesserit teachers.”

“The birth mother’s wishes are not relevant in this matter,” Naliki said.

Irulan struggled to keep her expression neutral. Typical Bene Gesserit arrogance. “Muad’Dib will not permit anyone to interfere with his sister, or with the daughter of Lady Margot, who has been entrusted to our care.”

Osted’s expression became sly. “But you can influence him. It is a small request to provide the girls with a Bene Gesserit education. How could he refuse?”

“How little you know Muad’Dib! Any attempt to manipulate him would be fruitless.”

“Do not forget your allegiance is to the Sisterhood!” Genino exclaimed, rising from her bench. “Out of respect for your royal station, we have been polite, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is a matter open to discussion. We command you to do as we say.”

Irulan also stood, making no further pretense of welcome. “Indeed, it is not a matter open to discussion, so I shall debate with you no more. Did you disembark with luggage? If so, I will arrange to have it sent back to the spaceport. I advise you to depart on this evening’s shuttle, to avoid incurring the Emperor’s displeasure. Reverend Mother Mohiam has already been banned from traveling here. Would you like that stricture to be extended to all members of the Sisterhood?”

“We will not be herded around!” Genino’s anger and surprise were so great that she allowed hints of it to slip past her control. Irulan was astonished, marking the reaction with great interest. Obviously, Marie Fenring was even more important to the Sisterhood than Lady Margot had revealed.

Irulan heard footsteps from the pathway on the other side of the hedge. Familiar footsteps. “Ah, the Emperor approaches — he must have been informed of your arrival. You may ask him yourselves, if you like.”

Paul emerged from the labyrinth, attired in an elegant green-and-gold robe of state. He looked as if he had just interrupted his duties, and his expression showed palpable annoyance. He strode directly to the gazebo. “Why was I not informed immediately that Reverend Mothers had arrived in Arrakeen?”

Irulan formally curtsied. Half a beat later, the other three women did the same. Genino found her voice quickly. “We came to visit Princess Irulan, noble Sire.”

Irulan said in a soft voice, “They did not come at my invitation, and they are departing immediately.” She shot a cool smile at the three women. “They demanded influence over the education of Alia and Marie.”

“Absolutely not.” Paul didn’t take even a moment to decide. “I forbid it.”

Irulan added, “Apparently, Lady Margot Fenring was not aware of their intentions, either.”

The three Reverend Mothers looked startled at Irulan’s detached behavior. But their priorities were no longer hers. In the process of compiling the story of Paul-Muad’Dib Atreides, she had begun to learn other threads of cause and effect — and serious missteps — that made her wonder about the Sisterhood’s wisdom. She discovered that the Bene Gesserit had shaped portions of the historical record as they saw fit, concealing their mistakes and embellishing their successes. Certain facts were like clay in their hands. So it was with Irulan as well, in the telling of her famous husband’s story.

“We make no attempt to interfere, Sire,” Genino said. “We are merely here to offer —”

Paul cut her off, his expression dangerous. “You would be wise to consider your words before you speak further. With my truthsense, I hear your lies as if they are shouts.”

The robed trio departed hastily, with awkward motions. Irulan realized that she was surprisingly amused, though her heart pounded at the thought of what she had dared to do. The repercussions here, and on Wallach IX! She listened until they were well into the hedge maze, then said to Paul, “How they will talk when they return to the Mother School.”

“I do not fear their talk.” Paul looked at her with unusual candor. “I was something of a disappointment to their breeding plans myself, like Count Fenring. Presumably, his daughter Marie is quite precious to them because of her genetics.”

Irulan nodded. “With your permission, I would like to inform Lady Margot Fenring of this incident. Perhaps it will make her more of an ally. This was, after all, as much of an affront to Marie as it was to Alia.”

He studied her momentatily. “You surprise me with your dimensions of complexity, Irulan.”

“Thank you, my Lord.”

“Yes, send your message to the Fenrings and tell them what the Bene Gesserit attempted to do here. I am curious to see how they will react.” Paul whirled and left.

Alone at the center of the maze, Irulan performed a prana-bindu breathing exercise to calm herself.

10

In their many years of marriage, Margot Fenring had seen her husband in bad moods, but never quite like this. Learning from Irulan of the Reverend Mothers’ attempt to interfere with Marie’s training had set him off on a private tirade. “Bene Gesserit blundering could jeopardize our delicate plans. What could they have been thinking? Now that Paul Atreides is aware of the Sisterhood’s interest in Marie, he may start asking inconvenient questions. We must accelerate our timetable.”

Margot bitterly resented the Sisterhood’s interference. Had she and her husband not been clear enough with Reverend Mother Mohiam when they went to Wallach IX? Now they would have to act even more blatantly to bypass the Sisterhood. “Our plan must adapt to circumstances, my love, and we have a sudden opportunity. This provides a convenient catalyst. Now that Irulan has informed us of this outrage, we simply must visit Arrakeen to assure ourselves that Marie is all right.”

His overlarge eyes glittered. “Hmm-ahh. Yes, the Emperor would not deny us that privilege. Our poor, dear daughter, threatened by the meddling witches.” Fenring kissed her on the cheek. “We shall arrange for immediate passage to Arrakis.”

THE COUNT NEEDED no reminders about their plan as he and Lady Margot disembarked at the spaceport outside Muad’Dib’s stupendous, sprawling capital. The journey had given them ample time to discuss nuances, contingencies, and shadings of behavior that they would follow. Their goal remained paramount, the key intersection point of all the lines of possibility.

Even so, Fenring could not deny the fact that he was eager to see their daughter again. By now she must be ready.

He and his Lady looked up at the battlements and ramparts of the huge citadel complex that sprawled across the northern suburbs of Arrakeen, centered on the old Residency, and extended all the way to the Shield Wall cliffs — so different from when the Fenrings had lived here! Gigantic suspensor cranes loomed over portions of the vast compound as work continued.

Margot must have noted a slight quivering in the muscles of his primary weapon hand — tension, preparation. When his wife touched that forearm and made eye contact with him, he felt his pulse slow, just a little. He said, “Mmm, I will let you do the talking for both of us.”

Yes, they had woven a deadly tapestry of plans, but the Imperium was full of plans and unseen linkages. They had both been surprised to learn of the assassination attempt during the Great Surrender ceremony — not by any of Muad’Dib’s numerous sworn enemies, but by a purportedly faithful Swordmaster. The Count found it amusing. With many attempts brewing, sooner or later some plot was bound to succeed against Paul Atreides. He was like the pretentious, widely despised master of a carnival sideshow, but on a galactic scale.

Apart from the inconvenience to himself and to his beloved wife, Fenring had not been sad to see Shaddam dislodged from power; by the same token, he would be glad to see an end to the brief, terrible reign of Muad’Dib. In its place, after the turmoil, he would make sure he was in a position to establish something far more efficient and… majestic. Ultimately, whoever sat on the throne would need popular support, as well as a network of fail-safes to maintain power.

Paul Atreides should have come to him for advice in the first place.

One of the Spaceport soldiers marched toward them, a statue in motion. Blocking their way, he raised one hand in a stiff, halting gesture, while keeping the other near a sheathed dagger. No emotion showed on his chiseled, weathered face, like something sculpted by sandstorm winds. “State your business in the city of Muad’Dib.”

“There is no need to be impertinent,” Lady Margot said. “We were cleared on the shuttle. Our daughter is a guest in the Emperor’s household, and we have come in response to an urgent message sent by the Princess Irulan.”

“Hmm-m-mm, you will treat us with the respect we are due,” Fenring said, his eyes dangerous. “I am a Count of the Landsraad and this is my Lady.”

Too late to do anything about it, Margot saw that her husband was provoking the self-important brute. When the soldier began to draw the dagger at his waist, it was like touching a trip wire. Fenring hurled himself upon the larger man and struck his wrist a sharp blow, causing the fingers to release the knife just as it came free of the sheath, and the blade clattered to the ground. A second blow to the elbow numbed the soldier’s entire arm, followed by a blurring kick that snapped his ankle sideways, causing the man to topple to the ground. With the side of his hand, Fenring then delivered a precise blow to his opponent’s temple, after which he slammed an elbow into the man’s face. The soldier moaned and went limp, bleeding from one of his eyes.

Fenring stepped back, looking amused. “Ahh, one of Muad’Dib’s finest, I see.”

Margot spoke over the sound of running boots and the shouts of other soldiers. “Well, my dear, at least we have their attention now.”

In a fluid motion, Count Fenring crouched with the recovered knife in his hands, ready to face the men running toward them. Margot went into her own fighting stance with her back to his. This had been one of their projected scenarios, and she hoped it would play out as she anticipated. They could act greatly affronted, insulted by the treatment Muad’Dib gave to his invited guests, and they might experience the slightest relaxation in security around them, later.

And even if that didn’t happen, she was confident they would survive this minor confrontation.

The special guards circled them warily, a score of men with drawn weapons — long guns, pistols, dart throwers, swords. Without personal shields, the two of them could easily be cut down, regardless of their fighting skills. But these guards would need instructions from higher up before doing that to a nobleman and his lady. “Hmm-ah-hmm, my apologies,” Count Fenring said, raising his hands in surrender. “That man insulted my Lady, and I, ahh, tend to be overprotective. Entirely my fault.”

The soldier behind them — who had cleared the Fenrings before they left the shuttle — conferred in low tones with a superior officer. The gruff officer nodded, which seemed to reduce the level of tension by a fraction. He looked in disgust at the wounded soldier trying to recover himself on the ground.

Then the ranking officer ran his gaze up and down Fenring. “Any soldier who can be so easily bested by a mere… visitor has no business serving among Muad’Dib’s guards. He is relieved of further duty.” He motioned, and the tense Fedaykin put their weapons away. The officer said, “Allow me to show you into the citadel. You can state your business to Princess Irulan herself.”

Fenring grinned as Margot took his arm, and the two strolled after their escort.

WHILE SERVANTS STOOD nearby, Irulan greeted the Fenrings at the arched door of her private citadel wing. Tall and elegant, the eldest daughter of Shaddam IV wore a long gown of black parasilk, cut low at the front and sparkling with tiny Hagal emeralds on the bodice and half sleeves. Her blonde hair was tightly coiffed with a brilliant fire-diamond tiara. She had obviously donned one of her finest court dresses, as if she were back in the Imperial Palace on Kaitain.

After greeting her guests, Irulan escorted them past a writing desk piled with notes. Fenring glanced curiously at one of the pages, but Irulan quickly directed him toward a dining table where a sumptuous luncheon had been set out. “Won’t you join me for a light repast? I have already summoned Marie, but as you can see this royal fortress is very large.”

“We are, hmm, quite anxious to see our dear daughter.” Fenring leaned forward to sniff at a sealed tureen, but no odors escaped. He glanced back at the desk, still interested in what Irulan had been doing. Was she writing another one of those damnable propaganda tracts?

Margot continued, “We were most disturbed to hear about the Sisterhood’s attempt to take over her training. We chose to send Marie here because we did not want her to be entirely indoctrinated in Bene Gesserit ways. But it seems even in the Imperial Court she could not entirely escape them. Is she safe here on Arrakis?”

The Princess slipped gracefully into a chair at the head of a long table covered in white linen and laid out with silver. “Although you and I are Bene Gesserits, Lady Margot, even we can admit that occasionally the Sisterhood oversteps its bounds. There is no longer a problem as far as your daughter’s schooling is concerned, because Muad’Dib has spoken.” At the memory, her lips quirked in a tight smile. “The Mother School made a grave error in offending him, and he is not likely to forget anytime soon.”

A servant unsealed the tureen to reveal a thick, dark potage. “Caladanian boar soup,” the Princess said. “My husband’s favorite.”

Though the visitors tasted their soup and made appropriate sounds of appreciation, Irulan did not sample hers. She said, “Even without Bene Gesserit supervision, questions remain about your daughter and the instruction she has already received. The child is showing certain unusual signs. How has she been trained?”

Fenring exchanged a quick glance with his wife and said, “Only… ahh, as required, as we saw fit. Her upbringing in Thalidei has not been especially pampered. She has received a broad foundation in numerous disciplines.” The Count ran a finger around the lip of an empty glass. “In our zeal to protect the child, I taught her what I know, as did my wife. And the Tleilaxu had some interesting… ahhh, seasoning for us to consider.”

Worried that some detail might have slipped, Margot looked at Irulan and asked, “What sort of unusual signs have you seen? Has Marie done anything wrong?”

“Not at all. She and Alia have become quite close in only a few short months. And Alia, as you are well aware, was born under extremely strange circumstances.”

“An Abomination,” Margot said, then quirked her lips in a smile. “Another overzealous Bene Gesserit label. Do you suggest Marie is also pre-born?”

Irulan shook her head. “No, but she seems every bit Alia’s match and equally as cunning. You have not been entirely candid with us from the beginning.”

“Our daughter is a special child,” Margot said.

The Count smiled. “Ah, um-m-m. It sounds to me like the two girls are quite suited to each other as playmates. We couldn’t have asked for better.”

Moments later, little Marie came running into Irulan’s private apartments. She wore a pink-and-white party dress with a lacy frill on the hem and white shoes that clicked on the floor as she ran. Her parents rose to their feet, and she went to the Count first and hugged him.

“Thank you for sending me to Arrakeen. I love it here,” Marie said to him. “Everyone treats me well, and I’ve been a good girl.”

“We’re pleased to hear that, darling.”

11

Your daughter is an interesting child, Count Fenring,” Paul said, as he led his visitor down an underground stairway. “She has remarkable genes,” Fenring answered, without elaborating further. “I am pleased you find the girl as exceptional as we do.”

Workers had found this old passage when they were excavating the citadel, deeper than the original foundation of the Arrakeen Residency, so well hidden that it had not been detected during the initial scan for Harkonnen traps long ago. Paul doubted Fenring knew of its existence, though the tunnel was incomparably older than the building above, and its existence led him to believe there might be other passages tangled beneath the ancient structure. The air here was clean and cool, the steps heavily worn from the passage of many feet in ancient times. Thousands and thousands of years ago.

Fenring followed several steps back, descending carefully in the dim light, looking around with his overlarge eyes. In the low yellow illumination from glowstrips recently applied to the sides of the steps, the narrow-faced man looked nocturnal, ever alert and wary.

On short notice that morning, Paul had summoned the Count, taking him beneath the eastern wing of the citadel — away from guards and eavesdroppers. “Do you doubt my ability to defend myself — even from someone like him?” Paul had asked the anxious Fedaykin, and they had withdrawn their objections. Nevertheless, where this man was concerned, Paul’s prescience was hopelessly unreliable.

Count Hasimir Fenring. Such a notorious, dangerous reputation he had, but Paul had always felt a faint echo of compassion for this person who had served Shaddam IV, sensing that perhaps he had more in common with Fenring than either of them realized.

“I know what you are, Count — what the Bene Gesserit wanted you to be. I sensed things about you from the moment I laid eyes on you in the Padishah Emperor’s presence. You are much like me.”

“Hm-m-m-m. And how is that?”

“Each of us is a failed Kwisatz Haderach — failed in the eyes of the Sisterhood, at least. They didn’t get what they wanted from you, and they cannot control me. I am not surprised they would be so fascinated with your daughter.”

“Ahh, who can understand the myriad breeding schemes of witches?”

“Who can understand the many things we must do?” Paul added.

After ending the Thorvald rebellion with emphatic violence, Paul had been forced to sterilize two more planets, completely eradicating their populations. Sterilization… worse even than what had happened on Salusa Secundus, worse than what Viscount Moritani had threatened to do on Grumman. Paul realized that he barely felt any guilt over what he had done.

Have I become so accustomed to causing death and destruction? At the thought, a cold wave passed through his chest.

He remembered killing Jamis in combat, the first life he had ever taken. He had been shaken but proud of his accomplishment, until his mother brought down a hammer of guilt on him. Well, now — how does it feel to be a killer?

He had grown too comfortable with the feeling. Muad’Dib could order the annihilation of worlds without a second thought, and no one would question him. Paul, the human, could never allow himself to forget that.

Because Count Fenring had also been groomed as a Kwisatz Haderach, also intended to be a pawn… maybe the two of them had a common basis for understanding that Paul could not experience with anyone else, not even with Chani.

Reaching the bottom of the stairway, Paul stood at the opening of a rock-lined tunnel. “I am not a god, Count Fenring, despite the mythology that has arisen around me.” He motioned to the left, where a side passageway was illuminated by glowglobes that bobbed with the slight disturbance in the air.

“We, hmmm, have much to learn from one another. And perhaps through that understanding we can better learn about ourselves. You would like us to be, ahh-hmm-mm, friends? Do you forget that Shaddam told me to fight you after the Battle of Arrakeen?”

“I remember that you refused. It is the difference between pragmatism and loyalty, Count. You saw who was the victor and who was the vanquished, and you made your choice.”

“Yes, hmm, but I did voluntarily accept exile with Shaddam, until I felt the need to move on. We did not want our daughter raised on Salusa Secundus.”

They rounded a bend, where the passageway narrowed. “All relationships change, Count Fenring, and as humans we must adapt to them or die.”

“Adapt or die?” Warily, the Count peered down the tunnel in one direction and another. “Um-m-m-ah, do you have interrogation chambers down here?”

“All Empires require such things,” Paul answered. “The Corrinos certainly did.”

“Hmm-ahh, of course. I am sure that the intrigues in your citadel are not so very different from what they once were on Kaitain.” He cleared his throat, as if something dry had lodged there.

“Actually there is a difference, Count, because I am as much Fremen as Atreides. The desert determines my actions as much as my noble blood, and I have more than mere politics — I have religion. As much as I don’t want to be, I am a religion. Similarly, my warriors are more than simple fighters. They also see themselves as my missionaries.”

Paul paused at a small, dark opening, where he activated controls to seal a metal door behind them, removing all light. In the darkness, he heard Fenring breathing, and smelled his fear-saturated perspiration. Involuntary moisture loss. After only a brief pause, he opened a second door and entered a larger chamber where dim, awakening illumination responded to their arrival.

“In a sense, we’re going back in time.” He waited for Fenring to notice the paintings and writings all around them, strange designs on every possible surface of walls, floor, and ceiling. “This is an ancient Muadru site, long buried. Probably older than the Fremen presence on Dune.”

“Fabulous. How fortunate you are to find such a site. In all my years in the Residency, it seems I was unaware of the treasures beneath my feet.”

Hearing this, Paul felt his truthsense twinge, like an alarm beginning to go off but not quite sounding. Did it have something to do with Paul’s inability to see Fenring with his own prescience, some clashing of the auras of two failed Kwisatz Haderachs? Or was it a bit of a lie from the Count about the Muadru site? But if so, why would he hide such knowledge?

The Count was careful not to disturb any of the markings. “Ahh, I was far too interested in the more obvious treasures of melange, I suppose.”

Paul did not try to conceal the awe in his voice. “This chamber is the smallest hint of the race that settled numerous planets, long before the Zensunni Wanderers. Apparently they arrived on Dune before it became such a desert. Some legends suggest they even brought the sandworms from elsewhere, but I cannot say. We know very little about them.”

“Your name comes from the Muadru?”

“There appears to be a linguistic connection between the Fremen and the Muadru, but the latter race vanished at independent sites all over the galaxy — suggesting a terrible cataclysm that took them all at once.”

The unlikely pair walked around the chamber, looking closely at the drawings, numerals, letters, and other artwork; there were color paintings using unknown pigments, and etchings in the cool stone. “Hmm-ah, perhaps you missed your calling, Sire — you might have been an archaeologist instead of an Emperor.” Fenring chuckled at his own suggestion.

“People know me for my Jihad, but I like to think I am excavating the truth of humanity, digging up what must be found and purging what must be eliminated. Always seeking the truth, always pointing toward it.” Paul sealed the chamber again and led Fenring back the way they had come. “So many legends and stories surround me, but how many of them are really true? Who can know what really happens in history, even when you live through it yourself?”

Fenring fidgeted. “I happened to observe, ahh-hmm, that Princess Irulan is writing yet another volume in her ever-growing biography. Revisionist history?”

“Just more of my story. The people demand it. Billions speak of me in heroic terms, but the stories about me are incomplete. Just as they are about you, I suspect. We’re alike, aren’t we, Count Fenring? We are much more than what people say about us.”

“We have our loyalties,” he said enigmatically.

Paul had no illusions about his guest. If it suited his needs, Fenring could very well turn against him. On the other hand, an Emperor could use a man with Fenring’s clandestine skills and subtlety. The Count certainly knew his way around in elite circles. Paul guided him down a new corridor rather than returning to the stone steps that would lead them back up into the light.

“Where, hmm, are we, ahhh, going now?”

Paul opened another door. “One of my private cellars. I’d like to share a bottle of Caladanian wine with you.”

“Much better than a torture chamber,” Fenring said.

12

It was supposed to be an intimate banquet for Paul and the Fenrings, with Chani, Irulan, and the two girls, but for the Emperor Muad’Dib nothing was permitted to be informal.

Alia knew that the places had been chosen with care. Paul and Chani would sit beside one another at the head of the table, with Alia next to her brother on his right side, then little Marie, and farther down the table would be Count Fenring and his Lady, far enough away from Paul, should the Fenrings make any attempt against him. On the left side, Irulan would sit closest to the head of the table, across from Alia and Marie; then Stilgar, and finally Korba where the two Fremen could watch the Count and Lady.

The room had been swept for chemical explosives such as the bomb that had detonated beneath Muad’Dib’s throne, metal objects, weapons of any kind, automated tools of assassination. Grim Fremen stood guard in the kitchen, monitoring the preparation of every dish. Poison-sniffers hovered over the banquet table. All utensils were smooth and dull, minimizing their potential use as weapons.

Ever since Bludd’s hunter-seeker attack, Stilgar had insisted that Paul and his party wear shields when in the presence of visitors, even at meals, though it always made the process of dining somewhat awkward.

Korba felt that Paul’s own prescient skills, though erratic, could enhance even the most extravagant security preparations. During the planning stages he had insisted, “Muad’Dib, if there is danger, your predictive powers could give us warning.”

Paul had cut the man off. “Where Count Fenring is concerned, Korba, little is clear to me, ever.”

Although Fedaykin guards were stationed in the hall, Stilgar could not allow himself to merely be a fellow dinner guest; instead, he vowed to serve as Paul’s personal bodyguard. Ever suspicious of the Count, Stilgar had personally scanned Marie’s clothes and paid close attention to every item Fenring and his Bene Gesserit wife brought into the banquet chamber, but he found no weapons, no poisons, nothing unusual.

The dinner party met in the former dining hall of the old Arrakeen Residency. This was a historically significant room, where Alia’s brother and parents had broken bread when they first arrived on Arrakis — before Harkonnen treachery had changed everything. There had been no straight-line progression in her brother’s life from then to now, nor in Alia’s. As servants put the finishing touches on the table and the chefs were hard at work, Alia stood near her chair, waiting for her eminent brother to enter.

After Marie’s parents had arrived on Arrakis, the girl’s style of play had altered subtly as they improvised more games, making Alia wonder if her friend was somehow subdued or intimidated by them. “Are you afraid they’ll take you back to Tleilax?” Alia had asked in a whisper.

“I will never go back to the Tleilaxu.” Marie sounded as if she was stating a fact, rather than making a defiant pronouncement.

At the appointed time, Paul and Chani entered the dining hall and took their seats at the head of the table. Forsaking formality, they wore clean yet simple desert clothes. Visible under his cape Paul had also chosen to wear a black tunic emblazoned with the red Atreides hawk crest, no doubt for the Count’s benefit. Paul’s shield mechanism was apparent, as was Chani’s, but not activated.

Hasimir and Margot Fenring strolled into the banquet hall arm in arm: the not-quite-misshapen man and the beautiful Bene Gesserit seductress who clearly adored him. Alia wondered how far the Sisterhood’s breeding program had missed its mark in Hasimir Fenring, how close a counterpart he was to her brother’s abilities. She sensed great danger in the man. On the other hand, she had to agree with Paul: he could be a formidable ally.

Lady Margot looked like perfection in a gown made of gray and black elfsilk; at her pale, smooth throat she wore a long strand of large muted-lavender diamonds whose color seemed enhanced by the sleek dress. So thorough were the security precautions, Stilgar had scanned the strand itself to make sure it was made of breakable thread, rather than shigawire or some other cord that could be used as a garrote.

Little Marie walked slightly ahead of her parents, excruciatingly well-mannered but barely able to contain her energy. An impish grin touched her lips.

For the occasion Alia had decided to wear her favored black aba robe, which gave her the paradoxical appearance of both child and Fremen matron. In stark contrast, Margot Fenring had taken great care to dress Marie as a perfect daughter in a fine little gown made of expensive fabrics, whale-fur, and lace. Her golden hair was bound up in a mist of tiny jewels. Alia hardly recognized her companion.

Fenring placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward, his chin on his interlocked hands, as he looked past the two girls to where Paul sat. “Hmm, Sire, I have a gift for you before we begin. I could have presented it earlier, but I was waiting for… aahh… the correct time.” He stroked his clean-shaven chin, looked awkwardly across the table. “Your man Korba has it.”

Korba was taken aback because he had not expected this. When Paul looked at him, the Fedaykin clapped his hands and gave hushed orders to one of the guards, who dashed out of the room.

Alia leaned over to Marie. “What is it? What did they bring?”

The girl glanced at her. “Something interesting.”

Finally, two men bustled in from the hall carrying a wrapped package. “I hope you’ve kept it safe,” Lady Margot said.

Korba seemed insulted. “It was placed in my care.” He set the object in front of Paul and unwrapped folds of black cloth to reveal a jewel-handled knife. The edge seemed to radiate light.

Paul scowled. “You brought me a dagger? What sort of message is this?”

“It is a historically significant weapon, Sire. You may recall that this is the same blade carried by Emperor Shaddam, which he gave to your father Duke Leto after the success of his Trial by Forfeiture, but Leto eventually returned it to him.” After a pause, he added, “It is also the knife Shaddam offered to Feyd-Rautha for his duel with you.”

Paul frowned down at the offering. “Is there a deeper message I should read into this?”

Fenring wrinkled his forehead. “You are well aware of a certain, aahh, friction in my relationship with Shaddam. In an attempt to lure me back to his side, he sent me this blade as a gift, hoping I would return to Salusa Secundus and be his companion.”

“And you are giving it to me instead?”

Count Fenring smiled. “That is my answer to His Fallen Majesty, Shaddam Corrino IV.”

Paul passed the weapon to Chani. She examined it, placed it on the table between them.

Marie fidgeted in her place, and Lady Margot caught her eye, gave her a sharp look. Alia searched for any hidden code in the gesture, but it seemed to be no more than the scolding of an impatient mother.

The first course was brought in, accompanied by an intriguing savory aroma. “Hmmm, smells wonderful.” Fenring picked up one of the cubes of meat. “What is it?”

“Broiled pit snake in a piquant sauce,” Chani answered, letting the Count draw his own subtle meanings.

The guests each had a large goblet of water flavored with bits of cidrit rind. Imported olives were accompanied by a salad of chopped lettuce and portygul wedges in rosewater. Alia knew that the Fenrings fully recognized the largesse of moisture that Paul was showing, though Lady Margot hardly took a sip of her water.

“When House Atreides took possession of Arrakis,” Paul mused, “my father hosted a banquet to present himself to important personages of the city, and — I am certain — to sniff out potential enemies.” He glanced down at the jewel-handled knife beside his plate. “Are you my enemy, Count Fenring?”

“I don’t believe so, Sire.”

“You are aware that I have truthsense?”

“I am, aahh, aware of when I have told the truth and when I have not.”

“Perhaps you shade the truth now?”

Fenring didn’t answer, as Paul looked at him warily. Paul sensed something, but what?

Alia continued to eat, but watched the reactions around the table. For some reason, Marie giggled.

The chefs had chosen a main course of roasted butterfish, one of Paul’s favorites from Caladan. Gurney Halleck had recently sent a shipment of the delicately flavored fish, which was now served in a traditional peasant style. With her small, nimble fingers, Marie peeled away the scales and skin, exposing the pale flesh and vertebrae as if she were an excellent dissectionist.

Fenring held up one of the curved sharp ribs of the butterfish. “One could easily choke on a fish bone. I hope I am not to construe this as a threat? No one but Shaddam would have ever served such an intrinsically dangerous meal.”

It was poor joke, but nevertheless Lady Margot and Korba chuckled.

“My father had good reason to fear assassination attempts,” Irulan said sourly. “He should have spent more effort strengthening his Empire, instead of conspiring with you, Count Fenring.” Alia was surprised to hear the bitterness in the Princess’s voice. “Many of his most troublesome ideas came directly from you.”

“Hmmm? Your assessment is entirely unfair to me, Princess, as well as factually incorrect. If dear Shaddam had listened to my ideas more often, instead of acting on his own, he would have gotten into far less trouble.”

Marie continued to toy with her fish. With her round-handled spoon, she tried to cut a hard-glazed vegetable, a dwarf Ecazi turnip — a slightly sweet, tasty morsel. The vegetable rolled suddenly off her plate and dropped to the floor beneath the table. As if hoping no one would notice her faux pas, the girl ducked down from her chair to retrieve it. Alia hid her amusement.

“Shaddam has been disarmed in every possible way,” Paul said. “Most of his Sardaukar have transferred their allegiance to me. Only one legion, comprised mostly of older men ready for retirement, remains with him in exile as his police force.”

“Hmm, I think you are too trusting, Sire. Sardaukar are blood soldiers. They are sworn to defend their Emperor.”

Chani’s voice was dangerous. “You forget, Count Fenring, that Muad’Dib is their Emperor now.”

Lady Margot glanced under the table to see what her daughter was doing.

Paul continued, “The fact that my Fremen defeated them so resoundingly was a mortal blow to their confidence. It is the law of the vanquished: I have proven myself the leader of the human pack, and they must bare their throats in submission.”

When she thought no one was looking, Alia slipped beneath the table as well. “Marie, what are you doing?”

The girl darted a glance back at her like a snake. Marie had peeled something long and thin from the table leg, barely thicker than a thread but as long as her forearm. A flexible band was wrapped around her knuckles. It had been hidden among the cracks and ornate carvings beneath the banquet table’s trim. Seeing Alia, Marie activated a minute power source, causing the object to extend and became rigid.

Alia recognized it for what it was — needlewhip dagger — a contraband Ixian assassination tool made from sharp, braided krimskell fibers. Because it was organic, it gave off no chemical signatures that would have tripped either a poison or explosive snooper. Marie could have placed it there during one of their games.

Alia’s thoughts tumbled into place, spelling out the details of a long-planned murder. The little girl had been planted like a cuckoo’s egg in the nest of the Arrakeen citadel. “Paul! Stilgar!”

She lunged toward Marie under the table, but the other girl slapped a hidden switch in one of the curlicue knobs on the table’s trim, activating another booby trap. From the stone block walls near the main door came a popping crack, densely packed powders released by a tightly wound spring-dispersal mechanism. When the two inert dusts mixed, a chemical reaction caused the fumes to spread out in a noxious cloud of foul-smelling yellow smoke that billowed blindingly into the room.

Someone screamed, repeatedly. At first it sounded like a woman, but Alia realized quickly it was Korba.

The explosion of smoke, cleverly planted without energetic chemicals or any kind of detectable ignition device, sent the door guards running to the wrong place. The delay and diversion needed to last only a few seconds. Marie was already there under the table, and with her small but deadly body she rose up between the table and Paul, even as he pushed back to get into a defensive position.

Marie pressed forward, far stronger than she looked, and drove herself into Paul’s now-activated shield, inserting the deadly needlewhip through the barrier. She slowed, using the resistance to her advantage. The weapon’s fine tip slid through the barrier like the needle of a medic administering a euthanasia injection.

Moving smoothly at the first instant of turmoil, Lady Margot Fenring snapped the thread of her necklace and spilled her strand of lavender diamonds into the goblet in front of her. Immediately upon contact with the water, the Tleilaxu gems released their impregnated chemicals, a potent but short-term paralytic not detectable by the banquet room’s poison snoopers. She and Count Fenring had already consumed a prophylactic antidote. She hurled the goblet’s contents away from her, splashing it across the table at Korba and Stilgar even as the men lunged to their feet. Some of the fumes even reached Irulan.

Alia saw Paul grab Marie’s small wrist and hold her off, preventing the needlewhip from extending more and plunging its fine, sharp point through his forehead. By now, the power source would have built up a substantial electrostatic charge, and a single burst could quickly and effectively short-circuit her brother’s brain.

At the far side of the room, yellow smoke continued to spread out. People were choking. The guards nearly tripped over each other. Stilgar and Korba had collapsed, stunned by the paralytic; Irulan could barely move.

Count Fenring had already acted, moving through the blinding smoke to reach the thick stone wall of the banquet room, where blocks fitted together perfectly to form a corner that, to even the most detailed inspection, appeared to be perfectly aligned. He knew the precise crack to push, the slight sliding to the left and then upward to reveal another mechanism — all the components of which were made of exactly the same kind of stone. Then a release, and the passage opened: access to the ancient tunnels underneath the Residency.

Many years before the Atreides occupation, Count Fenring had discovered the network of incalculably old passages beneath the foundations, and he had installed several access points in key areas. Because the system was his own clever design, Fenring knew these hidden entrances would have remained undetected in all the subsequent time.

Now, it would provide a perfect way for them to get away after the murder of Muad’Dib, leaving Arrakeen in an uproar. According to the plan he and Lady Margot had developed so carefully, an armed escape craft was already waiting outside, and from there they would reach the Heighliner and fold space to freedom.

The right people had been bribed, the entire process made easier by the fact that the Emperor Muad’Dib was so widely hated, even by many of those closest to him. The assistance of the Spacing Guild didn’t hurt, either. In all likelihood, the Count, Margot, and Marie would fill the power vacuum after Paul’s death, or find someone compatible who could do so. Even if not, without such a charismatic, prescient leader, the Jihad and this fanatical government would consume itself from within.

But first, Muad’Dib had to die.

When Marie threw herself upon Paul, however, surprise and treachery had been her main advantages. As Paul stalled the initial attack for a moment, Alia burst out from beneath the table and sprang at the other girl like a mongoose.

Breaking free of Paul, Marie lashed out at Alia with the needle-whip, and Paul’s sister danced back. Alia was more than a match for the other girl’s fighting ability, but she had no weapon of her own. Marie jabbed, and the hair-fine rapier made a whistling sigh through the air. “Let’s play, Alia.”

Though her muscles could barely respond from her exposure to the paralytic, Irulan crawled to one side, out of the way. Stilgar lay sprawled with his head, shoulders, and arms on the table, where he had collapsed. He twitched and struggled, his eyes fully aware, as he tried to pull himself up. Chani held her drawn crysknife, looking as formidable a fighter as any Fedaykin.

Alia sprang onto the dining table, trying to get out of reach of the needlewhip. Marie lashed and spun as she followed her up there, knocking settings aside while Alia dodged. It was clear the little Fenring assassin meant to dispatch her quickly. So much had happened in only a few seconds. “Now who is the scorpion?” Marie laughed.

Alia took another step across the tabletop and kicked a plate with a half-eaten fish carcass at Marie. The girl ducked to one side, her hard gaze never wavering. Alia spotted the Emperor’s ornate knife near her brother’s plate. In a blur of motion, she grabbed the blade and jumped toward her opponent, slashing beneath the needlewhip, catching the girl on the wrist, severing tendons. “I can sting, too.”

Marie’s hand instantly became useless, and the deadly weapon dangled from the loops wrapped about her knuckles. With no more than a hiss of pain, Marie jumped off the table and pounced on the half-paralyzed Irulan, choosing any victim she could find.

But Alia was unleashed now. The voices in Other Memory howled at her like a bloodthirsty mob. She raised the jewel-handled knife and slammed it into the back of the little girl. The blow was true, and the Emperor’s sharp blade pierced Marie’s heart.

“Marie!” Fenring cried, turning away from his exit tunnel and bounding forward. “No, not my daughter!”

Alia stood up, leaving the Emperor’s blade firmly planted within the twitching body of the treacherous girl. “You were never my friend.”

Korba looked on in awe, still seated where he had slumped helplessly back into his chair, and just starting to recover from the paralytic gas. As far as Alia could tell, the Fremen had not lifted a finger during the brief but intense battle. “The knife,” he said in a slurred voice, his lips moving slightly. “St. Alia of the Knife.”

Caught in the swirl of events around her, Alia realized that she stood at the threshold of her own legend.

13

Paul switched off his shield and strode over to the fallen body of Marie Fenring. Alia stared at the jewel-hiked knife protruding from her former playmate’s back, as if she could not believe what she had just done.

Chani stood with crysknife in hand, coiled for further violence and ready to protect Paul. “Stilgar, do you live?” she called.

Though he moved like a man half asleep, the naib said, “I live… The poison was temporary.”

Count Fenring had fallen to the floor on his knees and looked absolutely shattered. “Marie! Marie, my sweet little girl!” His shoulders hunched and shuddered as he lifted the dead child and cradled her. Behind him, an opening in the wall led down a sloped ramp and worn stairs into the dark tunnels of a secret labyrinth underground. His wife knelt next to him, also stricken. Both of them seemed to have abandoned their dream of escape.

A backwash of danger clamored in Paul’s mind, but in his prescient blind spot he could sense no details. Though he had always known the Count was devious, he had wanted to believe that he shared a bond with the other potential Kwisatz Haderach.

All along, though, Fenring’s deadly plot had been ticking like clockwork. He must have known it was a risky attempt, yet he had been willing to send his own daughter behind enemy lines and unleash her as a weapon, seeking to destroy not only Paul, but the Jihad. Had this man raised Marie from infancy with that sole purpose in mind? What kind of father could do that? He realized how Duke Leto might have reacted if the Harkonnens had actually killed Paul.

Lady Margot was white and rigid, as if she had discarded any attempt to maintain Bene Gesserit control over her emotions. Paul saw the agonized sorrow of a mother, but most of all he felt the sheer misery of Count Fenring. Raw, authentic emotion boiled up from him like a hot cloud.

Paul said, “You used a child as a pawn in an assassination plot. Your own child!”

“Oh, Hasimir is not her father, Paul Atreides.” Lady Margot’s voice dripped with scorn. “You knew her father. Feyd’Rautha Harkonnen.” Paul snapped his gaze to her in surprise.

In that instant, Count Fenring moved like a coiled viper, his muscles trained and retrained with years of practice as the Emperor’s most reliable assassin. Fenring yanked the Emperor’s dagger out of Marie’s body and drove the blade deep into Paul’s chest.

“One of my backup plans,” he said.

Reeling backward, Paul experienced every moment splintered into a million shards of nanoseconds. Each event had been as carefully laid out as the puzzle pieces in a Chusuk mosaic. Either the plan had originally been designed in extravagant and impossible detail, or Fenring had enhanced the scheme with so many branch points and alternatives that all possibilities had intersected in this single crux point.

The knife wound created a yawning gulf of pain in Paul’s chest. He heard a shrill wail from Chani. “Uuuussssuuuullll!”

She cried out again, but this time it was barely audible, a galaxy away.

Bleeding, Paul-Muad’Dib fell, as if tumbling into a vast chasm.

14

In the uproar that ensued, the room reverberated with shouts and barked orders. Count Fenring sprang away from Paul even as he fell. Still holding the Emperor’s knife, the assassin activated his shield and retreated to a corner, trying to reach the open passageway, but Fedaykin had already blocked it. Thwarted, he stood with his back to the stone blocks, prepared to defend himself. Margot Fenring joined her husband, also ready to die. Though she had no obvious weapon, she was a Bene Gesserit, and skilled in killing as well.

The horrified and enraged guards pressed close, a barely recovered Stilgar beside them, while Korba still struggled to pick himself up.

“Take him alive!” Irulan cried, her voice quavering as she tried to assert authority. She inhaled deeply, forcing control on her stunned muscles. “If you kill him, we will never know what other schemes he may have put in place! Do not make the mistake of believing this is the only plan afoot.”

Stilgar did not need to be given orders by the Princess. “We will not kill him — at least not now, and not swiftly.” Then his voice became a growl. “After the execution of Whitmore Bludd, the mob has a taste for it. I would not deprive them of their satisfaction.”

“I look forward to your interrogation games, hmmm?” Fenring mocked. “Perhaps we shall share advice on techniques?” Inside his body shield, he passed the bloody dagger from hand to hand.

Chani felt numb. Noisome smoke still drifted through the room, and Paul lay on the floor, bleeding to death. Desperate to save him, she pressed her hands against the wound; blood seeped through her fingers, red and slick.

Paul Atreides may have been Fremen in many ways, but he did not have the genetic desert adaptations that thickened blood for rapid coagulation. “Send for medics! A battlefield surgeon! A Suk doctor! Quickly!”

Two guards rushed out into the hall. Stilgar and the other Fedaykin would not let the Count escape. With a sneer, Fenring said, “Perhaps you should tend to your Muad’Dib, hmmm? He may have final words for you.”

Chani needed to stop the hemorrhage. “Usul, Beloved, how can I help you? How can I give you strength?”

She clasped his hands and felt a faint flicker, a twitch of the fingers, as if he were trying to signal her. Maybe the doctors could heal him, if only they arrived in time. But if Paul died before they could get him into surgery…

He was fighting, struggling within himself. Chani knew he had learned many things about his body after discovering his true nature as the Kwisatz Haderach, but she doubted if he had the skill to deal with such a severe, obviously mortal wound.

Alia was beside her, but even with all of her Other Memories and unusual knowledge, the girl could not help. “My brother is on the brink of death,” she said in a peculiar tone of awe. “I should have saved him.”

“We could still save him if only we could slow the bleeding, if only we could stop time —” Suddenly Chani straightened. “Alia! Run to my quarters, in the sealed jar by the table at the window. As a Sayyadina of the Rite, I keep some sacred Water of Life. Bring it for Muad’Dib.”

Though surprised, Alia was already on her feet. “The trance — my brother’s trance. Yes, we must induce it now!” The girl ran off, as swiftly as the wind.

Chani remembered when Paul had foolishly tried to prove himself, not just to the Fremen men by becoming a wormrider, but also by doing what only the most powerful women had achieved. Believing himself to be the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul had taken the unaltered poison, the exhalation of a drowned worm. Only the tiniest amount.

“One drop of it,” Paul had said. “So small… just one drop.”

Even so, it had been enough to plunge him into a coma so deep that he’d lain like a corpse for weeks, in suspended animation. Finally, with the help of both Chani and Jessica he had broken through that impasse, and had emerged able to detect and convert poisons. But that sort of manipulation required great effort and conscious volition.

Alia came rushing back in. Clutching a plaz container, she squirmed past the two medics who were only now entering with emergency-response kits. Alia arrived first, dropping to her knees and extending the jar to Chani. When the Fremen woman unsealed the lid, the bitter alkaloid stench rose up, so powerful it stung her eyes. The Water of Life was perhaps the most potent of toxins known to humankind. But right now, it was what Muad’Dib needed.

Chani touched her finger to the liquid, withdrew a single drop, and gently brushed Paul’s pale lips in a loving gesture, a faint caress. She knew that if she gave him too much, his body would not be able to counteract the chemical; he would go into a deep coma and his valiant heart would stop beating.

After the kiss of the poison, she sensed a new rigidity in his body. The blood finally stopped flowing, but she couldn’t sense him breathing anymore. His eyelids no longer fluttered.

One of the Suk doctors nudged her aside. “Lady Chani, you must let us tend him. We are his only chance.”

The other smelled the poison. “What is that? Take it away! We have no use for Fremen folk medicines.”

The first doctor shook his head. “So much blood. He can’t possibly survive this.” They knelt, felt for a pulse, applied monitors and talked quietly between themselves. “We are too late. He no longer lives.”

There were moans from the guards, while Stilgar looked ready to explode. Irulan actually wept, causing Chani to wonder if the tears were false or real.

Seeking calmness within, Chani simply said to the doctors, “You are mistaken. Muad’Dib survives, but his life is below the threshold of your detection.” When he had undergone the same thing before, many Fremen had also believed him dead. “With the Water of Life, I bought you time. Work your medicine, patch the wound.”

“Lady Chani, there is no point —”

“Do as I command! His body already knows how to fight off the effects of the coma. Act quickly, before the window of opportunity closes.”

ON THE FLOOR of the dining hall the doctors set to work, calling for assistants, more surgical tools, even blood transfusions that would do little if Paul’s heart refused to pump.

Feeling helpless, angry, and vengeful, Irulan watched, an outsider as the pivotal events transpired around her. Chani, Alia, and Stilgar formed a cordon around the wounded Emperor, keeping her away. Irulan did not understand the mystic Fremen ritual Chani had applied, saving Paul by giving him poison, but she did not protest. It certainly could do no harm.

Irulan could not venture close to the Count and Lady Margot either, who by now faced a dozen murderous guards waiting for any excuse to attack. She doubted the couple would survive the next hour if Paul died, and if he died, she would not bother to protect them.

Using a delicate cellular sealant and tissue grafting applied with probes and surgical instruments that were far more precise than an Ixian needlewhip, they attempted to repair the grievous damage caused by the sharp blade.

Irulan did not know how long the silence and tension would last.

One of the Suk doctors mumbled, as though expecting no one would hear him, “This is work more suited for a mortician than a surgeon.” In nearly an hour they had seen not the faintest signs of life. Nevertheless, the doctors worked feverishly until it was clear they had done all they knew how to do.

It was up to Paul now.

At the sight of her husband suffering, Irulan felt stunned and despondent. Princess Irulan’s mother and all her Bene Gesserit instructors would have been surprised at her automatic reaction. She wondered where the cool and politically savvy schemer within her had gone.

For a frightened moment, she considered whether or not she actually felt a flicker of love for him. But that was not a sentiment she could share with anyone — probably not even with him, if he survived.

Her devotion to him was less appreciated than that of a pet. But love? She wasn’t sure.

Beyond her personal concerns, Irulan was shaken by the realization of the horrendous political turmoil that was sure to follow the death of Muad’Dib. With so many factions struggling for the throne — including, surely, her own father trying to reclaim his place — the galaxy would be ripped apart in yet another horrific civil war. When added to the damages of the continuing Jihad, could humanity survive?

Her husband’s first heartbeat came so suddenly and unexpectedly that it startled the two doctors. Then a few seconds of silence, followed by another heartbeat.

And a third. The gaps between beats grew shorter and shorter, and finally the monitors showed a slow but steady pulse.

The Emperor Paul-Muad’Dib came back to life, still weak and barely holding on. Irulan felt fragile herself after the ordeal; her own heart thumped rapidly. This was Muad’Dib — of course he lived!

His eyes flickered open, and that was all Irulan needed to see. She wiped away her tears, and then they flowed anew. Tears of joy? Yes, she decided, and of anger that anyone had attempted this against her husband.

WHEN PAUL FINALLY sat up, his black tunic torn open and soaked with blood, Count Fenring switched off his personal shield and surrendered. His shoulders sagged, and he extended the bloodstained dagger, hilt first. “It appears I have nothing to gain by continued resistance, hmmm?”

Korba, now braver, grabbed the dagger out of Fenring’s hand. The guards rushed forward and seized both the Count and his Lady, binding them in shigawire and removing them from the banquet room. During the distraction of the arrest, Korba surreptitiously slipped the ornate Imperial knife up his own sleeve.

Irulan saw him do it, and knew there was no danger in it. She wondered where the well-traveled weapon would eventually wind up, if it would be stored as a holy relic somewhere or sold to a particularly devout (and wealthy) patron.

Paul insisted on getting to his feet. The doctors helped him, but he preferred to lean on Chani, placing his other hand on Alia’s shoulder. Irulan stood stiff-backed and gazed at him, content in the knowledge that he lived.

After pausing to catch his breath, Paul spoke in a surprisingly strong voice. “Find substitute… quarters for the Count and his Lady. They do not need to be comfortable, but ensure that they are not harmed — until I give specific instructions.”

15

Wearing shackles and flanked by four burly guards, Count Fenring stood at the foot of the Lion Throne. His once-fine trousers and coat were wrinkled and soiled, while his white silk shirt was torn and still bloody from the attack on Paul.

Paul had recovered miraculously — at least he had made it appear so. Already Irulan was working on the story that would add to the mythology of his life, and the people would believe it wholeheartedly, expecting nothing less from Muad’Dib. It would all be part of the growing legend. Princess Irulan now sat beside Paul’s throne with a writing tablet on her lap, but eyewitness accounts of the events had already gotten out.

Consuming great quantities of melange, he had found the energy to appear in court the following morning, where he sat on his throne and made pronouncements — all to prove that Muad’Dib still had the strength to guide his holy empire. Through prescience and plain common sense, Paul knew the havoc that would result if his followers decided to seek unbridled vengeance on anyone they could think of.

Paul knew he had to remain alive, not just for his own sake, but for the future of humanity. Paul remembered who he had been when he killed Feyd-Rautha here in a much different version of this room — a determined young man with victory in his hand and an empire at his feet. He had accepted his mantle of supreme command then, despite knowing the dark and dangerous slope that lay ahead of him. No one else could have guessed the full extent of what Paul-Muad’Dib would become. No one, not his mother, nor Gurney, nor Shaddam. Not even Chani, who understood him best.

From the beginning of his rule, Paul could have given the Imperium a glorious but temporary prosperity. Or he could have chosen ultimately to be seen as a ruthless tyrant. He could have made certain decisions to eliminate turmoil for the immediate future, to foster peace, to administer the government in such a way that all his subjects would love him. Had he handled it differently, history would have painted a favorable portrait of him… for a few generations, maybe even for millennia.

But that way was a dead end.

In his heart, he would much rather have lived in peace with Chani. Given different choices, he could have been like Duke Leto Atreides, beloved by all, fair to all, wise and honored for who he truly was. Instead, obeying no one but himself and the guidance of his prescience, he had sacrificed his personal happiness and the present to save the future. Thus Paul became not what he wanted to be, but what he needed to be… and what humankind needed him to be.

As Muad’Dib, he had taken the guilt upon himself by allowing the sacrifice of billions in order to save trillions. And only he fully understood it. He could not place the blame for this on anyone else, and so he accepted the burden and steeled himself to continue doing what needed to be done.

Now he sat in judgment over Count Hasimir Fenring, boon companion of the fallen Emperor Shaddam IV. This man had tried to kill him.

“Ah, hm-m-m-m, I suppose this means you will not be offering me your finest wine again?” Fenring infused his words with bravado and impertinent humor, but his demeanor betrayed uncertainty. His large eyes flicked from side to side, taking in the Fedaykin guards, Stilgar, and the bloodthirsty Chani. He seemed to be wondering which one of them would deal the death blow that was sure to come.

For a moment Fenring focused on Alia, who was seated on the edge of the dais in a black robe. She looked like a tiny executioner, awaiting the command from her brother. She casually kicked her dangling feet. It was a childlike pose like the one she had struck when Shaddam IV sat on this same throne, just before she surprised and killed the Baron Harkonnen.

In a way, she looked somewhat like dear Marie….

“Here on Dune, water is more precious than wine,” Paul said. At a small ornate table beside the Hagal quartz throne, he removed the stopper from a jewel-encrusted ewer. He poured himself a small goblet and another for Fenring. Chani took the cup to the prisoner.

Eyeing it suspiciously, Fenring lifted his heavily shackled hands and accepted the goblet with brave resignation. “So, you’ve decided on poison, hmm-m?” He sniffed the contents.

Paul sipped from his own cup. “It is pure water.” He took another drink to demonstrate.

“It is well known that Muad’Dib can, ahh, convert poisons. This is a trick, isn’t it?”

“No poison — on my honor. Atreides honor.” Paul locked his gaze with Fenring’s. “Drink with me.”

Alia poured herself a goblet and quaffed it with obvious relish.

Fenring scowled down at the liquid in his cup. “I served for many years here on Arrakis, so I know the value of water.” He drank from the goblet, then rudely let it clatter to the floor.

Paul took another sip. “That was the water distilled from Marie’s body. I wanted you to share it with me.” He casually poured the rest of the liquid on the dais and set aside the goblet, upended.

Doubling over with sudden nausea, the Count shuddered, then jerked at his shackles as if reaching for a weapon he didn’t have.

Now Lady Margot Fenring was brought into the chamber to stand beside her husband, with Korba and Stilgar behind her. The Count instantly showed worry, as if his wife’s fate concerned him more than his own. In a traditional Bene Gesserit black robe, Lady Margot still projected the hauteur of a noblewoman, despite the lack of opportunity to groom herself.

At a gesture from Paul, Alia sprang off the dais and stood in front of Marie’s mother, who gazed down at her with a stony expression. His sister held a long needle in her hand, the deadly gom jabbar. Margot Fenring stiffened, but Alia did not strike. Not yet.

Showing no weakness despite his injuries, remembering how the one-armed Archduke Armand Ecaz had insisted on going to war against Grumman after the wedding-day massacre, Paul rose from the throne and stepped down from the dais onto the polished floor. His motions were slow, deliberate, and charged with lethal intent. He stood directly in front of Fenring.

The Emperor drew his own crysknife and pointed its tip at the Count. The guards moved aside, and Fenring went rigid, every muscle in his body petrified. He stared beyond Paul, as if seeing the death that awaited him there.

“Please do not kill him,” Lady Margot said.

“We die regardless,” Count Fenring said, half to her and half to Paul. “The mob would tear us to pieces anyway, as they did to Swordmaster Bludd.” Now, shaking slightly, he looked at Paul. “Would it help if I were to fall to my knees and plead for you to spare her? She did save your life years ago, by warning you and your mother of Harkonnen treachery.”

“Your own treachery erased that water burden,” Stilgar interjected sharply.

Fenring acted as if he did not hear the naib. “If pleading would help, I’d abase myself in any manner to save the life of my Lady.”

Without answering, Paul circled the Count slowly, considering where to strike the mortal blow.

“You know I am more guilty than she is,” Fenring continued, babbling uncharacteristically. “I did not act out of loyalty to Shaddam, nor was this any Bene Gesserit scheme that my wife encouraged. I speak truly when I say I despise Shaddam, because his foolishness shattered any obligations I once had toward him. He removed any chance for the Imperium to be strong and stable. Imagine the scope of his failure — Shaddam’s rule was so hateful and corrupt that many people prefer even the fanaticism of your followers!”

Paul smiled savagely, but said nothing. He kept circling, pausing, and then continuing.

“It was not a personal thing, ahhh, I assure you. My hatred for you and your rule is purely logical. I needed to excise a particularly aggressive form of cancer for the sake of human civilization. With Muad’Dib removed from the equation, then Marie, myself, or a puppet might have had a chance to restore stability and grandeur.”

Finally, Paul said, “You knew Marie had little or no chance of success, but sacrificed her with the knowledge that you might have a moment of opportunity while feigning grief over her death.”

Fenring’s eyes flashed with anger. “I feigned nothing!”

“He didn’t!” Margot shouted.

Alia waved the gom jabbar in front of her.

Without taking his eyes from the Count, Paul said, “A trick within a trick, and at the precise moment of my weakness you almost succeeded.”

“You are the monster here, not I,” Fenring said. He maintained his resolve, his defiance. Then, turning, he fixed a long, lingering gaze on his wife. “I bid thee farewell.”

“And to you, my darling,” she said, looking at the poisoned needle in Alia’s hand.

If the situation were reversed, Paul knew that the Fenrings would not have granted him or Alia a reprieve. The Fremen side of Paul’s nature wanted to draw blood, and he knew that Alia had the same longing. Her upward gaze hungered for permission to strike with the gom jabbar.

Paul stopped, still holding his milky-white blade. He considered how his father would have dealt with such a situation. Duke Leto the Just. He remembered how the Atreides nobleman had been given that name. Thinking back, Paul recalled his father’s words: “I sentence you to live” he had said before sending Swain Goire off to exile. “To live with what you have done.”

A wave of sadness came over Paul as he considered how often he had made decisions that were different from those his father would have chosen. Paul did not expect Fenring to be wracked with guilt, not after his long history of violence. The Count was no Swain Goire. But execution was too easy, and Paul had had enough of barbarism.

Without warning, he slashed across the front of Fenring’s throat. An exquisitely accurate cut, delivered with precise muscle control.

Lady Margot screamed, lunging against her own restraints. “No!”

The Count staggered, lifting his shackled hands, clutching heavily at his neck. But he came away with only a smear of crimson on his palms.

“By tradition, once drawn, a crysknife should always taste blood,” Paul said. Calmly, he wiped both sides of the wormtooth blade across Fenring’s jacket, and resheathed the weapon.

Still on his feet, Count Fenring gingerly touched fingertips to his throat in astonishment. The precise slash had penetrated only a hairs-breadth. Tiny droplets formed a red necklace on the skin.

“This is not your day to die,” Paul said. “Every time you see that faint scar in the mirror, remember that I could have cut deeper.”

Paul turned his attention to the nobleman’s wife. “Lady Margot, you have lost a daughter, and that is already a terrible punishment for your crime, because I know you truly loved Marie. It is your misfortune to love this man who deserves only contempt.”

His head held high, Paul strode back to his emerald green throne, then raised an arm and made a dismissive gesture. “In ages past, it was said there was a curse on the House of Atreus, my ancient predecessors. Now, I am the one who imposes a curse. Hear this! I exile both of you to Salusa Secundus, where you are to be bottled up with Shaddam Corrino. Permanently. May your loathing for him grow day by day.”

16

She sat inside her private chambers, comfortable at the writing desk and deep in thought. These fine rooms no longer felt like a prison to her, or merely a place to store forgotten objects. Though Paul refused to share her bed, Irulan had become more than a trophy won in the old Battle of Arakeen, more than a token wife. Despite the obstacles in her path, she had earned a genuine position in Muad’Dib’s government, and perhaps in history itself. Even Chani could not fill this particular role.

“A story is shaped by the teller as much as by the events themselves.” Irulan remembered the Bene Gesserit aphorism, similar to an old saying the Jongleurs often used. In her hands — and her writing stylus — she had the power to influence what future generations knew… or thought they knew.

Here inside the magnificent Citadel of Muad’Dib, the Princess felt herself pulled in many directions. Her father and the rest of exiled House Corrino, expecting her loyalty, had rejected her for choosing her husband over her own family. Similarly, the Sisterhood still could not believe she would forsake them — refusing their demand that she exert influence over the Emperor, desperately hoping that their long-awaited Kwisatz Haderach was not lost forever to their control.

Irulan was no longer sure where she owed her allegiance. Everyone wanted something from her. Everyone needed something from her. And, she was coming to believe, her husband needed her most of all… in his own way.

Paul-Muad’Dib had died of a grievous knife wound and come back from the other side. Irulan tried to imagine how she would describe this in the next volume of her ever-growing biographical treatment.

I will write that Muad’Dib cannot be killed. And the people will believe that. They will believe me.

How could they not?

Paul had never claimed to love Irulan, had never offered so much as a hint of affection for her, though he had come to respect her knowledge and experience. Seeing him dead and pale in a pool of his own blood had shaken her more than she could have imagined.

The appropriate words were forming in her mind. She would remain here and write, and she would let history decide.

By the holy grace of Muad’Dib.