Dune

Chani looked toward the growing line of the sunrise. “Some of the women banded to appeal to the Reverend Mother. They demanded she exorcise the demon in her daughter. They quoted the scripture: ‘Suffer not a witch to live among us.’”

“And what did my mother say to them?”

“She recited the law and sent the women away abashed. She said: ‘If Alia incites trouble, it is the fault of authority for not foreseeing and preventing the trouble.’ And she tried to explain how the change had worked on Alia in the womb. But the women were angry because they had been embarrassed. They went away muttering.”

There will be trouble because of Alia, he thought.

A crystal blowing of sand touched the exposed portions of his face, bringing the scent of the pre-spice mass. “El-Sayal, the rain of sand that brings the morning,” he said.

He looked out across the gray light of the desert landscape, the landscape beyond pity, the sand that was form absorbed in itself. Dry lightning streaked a dark corner to the south—sign that a storm had built up its static charge there. The roll of thunder boomed long after.

“The voice that beautifies the land,” Chani said.

More of his men were stirring out of their tents. Guards were coming in from the rims. Everything around him moved smoothly in the ancient routine that required no orders.

“Give as few orders as possible,” his father had told him…once…long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”

The Fremen knew this rule instinctively.

The troop’s watermaster began the morning chanty, adding to it now the call for the rite to initiate a sandrider.

“The world is a carcass,” the man chanted, his voice wailing across the dunes. “Who can turn away the Angel of Death? What Shai-hulud has decreed must be.”

Paul listened, recognizing that these were the words that also began the death chant of his Fedaykin, the words the death commandos recited as they hurled themselves into battle.

Will there be a rock shrine here this day to mark the passing of another soul? Paul asked himself. Will Fremen stop here in the future, each to add another stone and think on Muad’Dib who died in this place?

He knew this was among the alternatives today, a fact along lines of the future radiating from this position in time-space. The imperfect vision plagued him. The more he resisted his terrible purpose and fought against the coming of the jihad, the greater the turmoil that wove through his prescience. His entire future was becoming like a river hurtling toward a chasm—the violent nexus beyond which all was fog and clouds.

“Stilgar approaches,” Chani said. “I must stand apart now, beloved. Now, I must be Sayyadina and observe the rite that it may be reported truly in the Chronicles.” She looked up at him and, for a moment, her reserve slipped, then she had herself under control. “When this is past, I shall prepare thy breakfast with my own hands,” she said. She turned away.

Stilgar moved toward him across the flour sand, stirring up little dust puddles. The dark niches of his eyes remained steady on Paul with their untamed stare. The glimpse of black beard above the stillsuit mask, the lines of craggy cheeks, could have been wind-etched from the native rock for all their movement.

The man carried Paul’s banner on its staff—the green and black banner with a water tube in the staff—that already was a legend in the land. Half pridefully, Paul thought: I cannot do the simplest thing without its becoming a legend. They will mark how I parted from Chani, how I greet Stilgar—every move I make this day. Live or die, it is a legend. I must not die. Then it will be only legend and nothing to stop the jihad.

Stilgar planted the staff in the sand beside Paul, dropped his hands to his sides. The blue-within-blue eyes remained level and intent. And Paul thought how his own eyes already were assuming this mask of color from the spice.

“They denied us the Hajj,” Stilgar said with ritual solemnity.

As Chani had taught him, Paul responded: “Who can deny a Fremen the right to walk or ride where he wills?”

“I am a Naib,” Stilgar said, “never to be taken alive. I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.”

Silence settled over them.