The Winds of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  “The situation has been out of control for some time, Stilgar. Paul created and encouraged it himself.”

  “But Chani did not, Sayyadina. She was a member of my troop and the daughter of Liet, a Fremen—not a mere symbol, as Alia wants her to be. We Fremen do not have funerals.”

  Jessica turned to him, narrowing her eyes. “Maybe it’s time to impose reality again. Chani’s water means more to the Fremen than to any other spectators. The flesh belongs to the person, the water to the tribe. No part of her belongs to an Imperial political show. A true Fremen would make sure that her water is not wasted.”

  Stilgar’s expression darkened. “Who can oppose what the Regent has decided?”

  “You can, and so can we. If we are careful. It’s what we are obligated to do.”

  Stilgar arched his eyebrows and turned his leathery face toward her. “You ask me to defy the wishes of Alia?”

  Jessica shrugged. “The water belongs to the tribe. And the Fremen are Chani’s tribe, not the entire Imperium. If we take Chani’s water, we can do the thing right. Let me deal with my daughter. There may be a way for us all to be satisfied. Right now, Alia is engrossed in her search for Bronso and any of his associates. Now is the time to take Chani’s water—for safekeeping.”

  Water-sellers walked down the streets chanting their eerie calls. Beggars and pilgrims milled around the workers who removed funeral pennants from high posts. Jessica saw that the orange-garbed foremen were tearing the cloth into scraps and selling the swatches as souvenirs from Muad’Dib’s memorial. A spice lighter came down to the spaceport, filling the air with a loud roar, but Jessica and the Naib existed in a small universe of their own.

  Stilgar looked at her with his blue-within-blue eyes. “I know how.”

  At night, listening to the daily hordes of wailing mourners, seeing the pilgrims continue to swarm in from offworld after the death of Muad’Dib (and knowing the Spacing Guild was reaping great profits from each passage), Stilgar concluded that such shameful excesses were decidedly non-Fremen.

  He had been a friend of Paul Atreides from the moment the young man took his sietch name of Usul. He’d seen Paul kill his first man—the hotheaded Jamis, who would have been forgotten by the tribe, except that dying at the right time and by the right hand had given him a certain historical immortality.

  But this, Stilgar thought, as he stood on a crowded Arrakeen street, wearing a well-fitted stillsuit (unlike most of these offworlders, who never learned or understood proper water discipline)—this was not the Dune he remembered.

  Stilgar had never liked Arrakeen, nor any city for that matter: the shuffle and press of ill-prepared pilgrims, the dark-alley crime, the garbage, noise, and strange odors. Although life in the crowded sietches had changed, it was still more pure than the city. Out there, people didn’t pretend to be something they were not, or they would not survive long. The desert sorted the faithful from imposters, but the city did not seem to know the difference, and actually rewarded the impure.

  Hiding his disgust behind noseplugs and a filterscarf, Stilgar walked the streets, listening to atonal music that wafted from a small gathering area where a group of pilgrims from the same planet shared cultural memories. Gutters stank from piled rubbish: The crowds left so much refuse behind that there was no place to put it—even the open desert couldn’t swallow it all. Bad smells were an evil omen to the Fremen, because rotting odors implied wasted moisture. He fitted his noseplugs more tightly.

  In busy Arrakeen, the only place a man could be alone was inside himself. No one paid any attention to the disguised Naib as he made his way toward the Citadel of Muad’Dib. Only when he reached the gates did he reveal his identity and give the countersign. The guards stepped back with a sudden snap of respect, as if they were clockwork mechanisms in tightly wound thumpers.

  For what Stilgar intended, it would have been better if his presence had remained unnoticed, yet without the unwavering authority Muad’Dib had conferred on him, he could never achieve what Jessica had asked of him. Stilgar was breaking supposed rules, following the course of honor instead of someone else’s law. He had to do this quietly and secretly, even if it required several trips, several secret nighttime missions.

  Muad’Dib was not the only one who had died. At least Stilgar and Jessica remembered that. . . .

  He reached the oppressively silent quarters where Usul had lived with his beloved concubine. Sooner or later, members of the Qizarate would convert this wing of the palace into a shrine, but for now the people regarded the rooms with religious awe and left them untouched.

  Atop a sand-etched stone slab, an ornate canopic jar held Chani’s water. Rendered down from her small body by a huanui deathstill after the difficult and bloody birth of the twins, only twenty-two liters of water had been recovered from her body.

  She’d been the daughter of Liet-Kynes before becoming the woman of Muad’Dib. A true Fremen warrior on Dune, she had fought many battles as a member of Stilgar’s troop. With callused fingers, he traced the intricate markings on the outside of the jar. A tremor of superstitious fear ran down his spine. Water was just water . . . but could it be that Chani’s ruh-spirit still lingered here?

  Her father Liet, the Imperial planetologist murdered by Harkonnens, had been the son of Pardot Kynes, who had inspired the Fremen dream of climate change on Dune. Stilgar’s comrade against Harkonnen excesses, Liet had died because he’d dared to help Paul Atreides and his mother.

  As Emperor, Muad’Dib had ensured that the dreams of Dr. Kynes endured. By his command, he had accelerated the terraforming process and established a new School of Planetology. If Muad’Dib was indeed the Lisan al-Gaib, the Shortening of the Way, then Liet-Kynes was the catalyst.

  And Chani was his daughter.

  The Regent and her amazon guards would curse him for what he was about to do, but Stilgar already had the blood of the Reverend Mother Mohiam on his hands, and the blood of others. He would do this.

  Unstopping the heavy jar, he drained some of the liquid into liter-jon containers that were easier to handle and hide under his cloak. In order to take it all, he would need to do this at least two more times, but as captain of the guard, Stilgar had ways of avoiding detection. With his precious burden, he slipped out of Muad’Dib’s quarters.

  “Why would anyone do such a thing?” Alia was at first genuinely baffled, but that swiftly changed. Jessica watched the emotions sweep across her daughter’s face, one after another—confusion, then outrage, then a hint of fear. “Who could have gotten into my brother’s quarters?”

  Ziarenka Valefor, the amazon guard reporting to them now, was a head taller than Alia, but she was so rattled by her accidental discovery that she looked to the young Regent for strength. Alia snapped an order to her guard. “Send for Duncan.” With a quick bow, Ziarenka slipped away.

  Shaking her head, Alia looked at her mother. “This must be another outrage committed by Bronso of Ix. After what he did at Paul’s funeral, now he wants to ruin Chani’s water ceremony, too. I’ll denounce him! When the people learn—”

  Jessica cut her off. “Better that you speak to no one of this, Alia.”

  Alia blinked, eased herself back down. “Chani’s water has been stolen. How can we just ignore it? And what can they possibly want? When a question has no obvious answer, I suspect the worst.”

  Jessica had already worked through the possibilities in her mind, choosing the best way to defuse an overreaction, and for Stilgar and the Fremen to get what they needed—what Chani needed—and what Alia needed.

  “I didn’t say to ignore the matter, but you can completely defuse it. Whoever committed this crime—one of Bronso’s cronies or some other perpetrator—probably intends to cause panic and unrest. Do they want to ransom it? Threaten to profane the water in some way? Regardless, they’ll expect you to create an uproar over it, but don’t give them the satisfaction. Don’t call attention to what has happened.”

  The suggestion did not sit w
ell with Alia. “We’ve got to thwart their plans, whatever they are. Chani’s water is gone. How are we to hold her memorial service now?”

  Jessica remained calm, unconcerned. “It was water. Refill the container, and no one will ever know. If Bronso claims to have Chani’s water, how can he prove it?” She didn’t consider the suggestion to be devious or dishonorable. It was a solution that even the Bene Gesserit would have considered acceptable. We both get what we want. “Water is water, and you can hold your memorial service as planned.”

  And the Fremen would have their own ceremony to honor Chani in their own way. Stilgar would be satisfied, too. As would Paul, who would know even after his own death that the right thing was being done.

  Alia considered, then nodded. “That is an acceptable solution. It renders any threat impotent.”

  We have reports of arms merchants attempting to sell stone-burners, even after one blinded Muad’Dib and such weapons were declared illegal. The fires of a stone-burner shall be as nothing compared to the avenging spirit of Muad’Dib.

  —ZIARENKA VALEFOR, chief of Alia’s guardian amazons

  After the funeral debacle, hapless detainees faced various forms of interrogation, guided by Alia’s most aggressive priests. The late (and unlamented) Korba had called the process “customized terror.” Large groups might unite in common cause, filled with grand dreams and righteous delusions, but alone and fearful in a shadowy chamber, individuals behaved quite differently. Each one had a key weakness that the inquisitors used expert methods to discover.

  And Alia needed to find answers.

  During Paul’s reign, he had not been innocent of such tactics himself, but had looked the other way as his surrogates conducted brutal interrogations. The criminal Bronso of Ix had been arrested and questioned then, and—against all odds—had escaped! Alia had never been able to shake her suspicion that Paul himself might have had a hand in the Ixian’s release, though she couldn’t understand why. Paul had not wanted to watch the interrogation of Bronso in his death cell, even though the Ixian spewed hateful rhetoric against him.

  With all the billions who died in his far-reaching Jihad, why didn’t her brother have the stomach for smaller unpleasantries? Having learned from Paul’s mistakes, however, Alia routinely, and clandestinely, watched during key interrogations. With her own powers of observation, she sometimes picked up things that others missed.

  So far, despite the most rigorous questioning of the suspects, the sessions had yielded no valid information. Either Bronso and his allies had a superhuman level of cleverness and luck in concealing their tracks, or the Ixian was acting alone. She refused to accept either answer.

  On a more positive note, Alia had used the funeral episode with Bronso as a catalyst to ferret out other affronts against Muad’Dib or House Atreides. In the dark of night, Qizara police forces spread through Arrakeen, Carthag, and countless villages, knocking down doors and arresting alleged arms merchants who had been trying to sell stone-burners like the one that had blinded Paul in a pillar of fire.

  When the questionable merchants were brought in, they in turn provided customer lists, and the offending weapons were rounded up and delivered to Arrakeen—for Alia’s own stockpile. In these dangerous and delicate months of her fledgling Regency, Alia Atreides needed to consolidate her power and control the manufacture, distribution, and use of significant weaponry.

  “Names provide names,” said Valefor.

  At a session of her Regent’s Council, by unilateral decree, Alia amended the long-standing rules of the Great Convention that applied to atomics. Previously, Great Houses had been permitted to keep their warheads, which could be used only under strictly defined defensive circumstances. Henceforth, as a temporary emergency measure, no one except the Imperial Regent herself could possess such weaponry.

  But how to pry the dangerous warheads from entrenched Landsraad families? To begin with, she set up an exchange program, under which noble houses could trade their family atomics for large rewards of spice, voting shares in CHOAM, or other perquisites. In the weeks following the Regent’s decree, many Great Houses dutifully surrendered their atomics, hungry for cash and spice after the hardships of the Jihad. Atomics hadn’t been openly used in warfare against rival families in millennia anyway.

  But some Landsraad families held out, hoarding their ancient warheads . . . to no good purpose, she knew. As her priests and bureaucrats carefully noted the arrival of the weapons and stored them for “appropriate use,” it soon became apparent that certain noble Houses were not quite so forthcoming.

  Using that as a starting point, Alia asked Duncan to maintain a list of potentially troublesome Houses. She submitted their names to the reconstituted (and ineffective) Landsraad that had reconvened on Kaitain, and she demanded exhaustive investigations and complete disclosure of their activities during the Jihad. Alia would not be caught by surprise.

  Armed with information, she would first try economic reprisals against the passively recalcitrant worlds, but she did not rule out any options, even the application of atomics in particularly stubborn cases. After all, Paul had sterilized ninety worlds over the course of the Jihad, so what was the loss of a few more planets?

  Back on Caladan, Jessica had fallen into a routine of tending her courtyard garden alone each morning for an hour or two, to contemplate the day’s obligations. Now, under a daybreak sky colored beige with dust and the canary yellow of the brightening sunrise, Jessica visited one of the sealed dry-climate gardens within the Citadel of Muad’Dib. The plants required very little water—some through natural selection, others by intentional hybridization. They had grown twisted hard branches, thick-skinned leaves, sharp spines, and thorns, impenetrable defenses against the harshness of the environment.

  Upon hearing of Paul’s death, she had rushed to Dune, but her thoughts had been about more than the loss of her son. An entire empire was at stake, a government that would survive or fall depending on the decisions Alia made. In all the times Jessica had thought about Paul’s legacy, and how his actions and words were being distorted by popular belief, she had not pondered what might happen to the Imperium without Paul. What was the legacy of House Atreides for the children, Leto and Ghanima?

  Her thoughts were interrupted when three men and a woman entered the dry-climate garden, seeking her out. They were an odd mix: Each wore a strikingly different outfit, and their facial features and skin tones left no doubt that they came from four different worlds, races, and cultures. They bore the look of governmental delegates.

  Jessica rose, standing beside a modified cholla cactus whose bent limbs looked as if they had frozen in the act of flailing. The cactus provided a shield as she faced her visitors, though surely they had passed through stringent security measures to get this far.

  “We apologize for arriving unannounced, my Lady, but we hoped for privacy and candor,” said the delicately built woman with porcelain white skin; blue-black hair hung to her shoulders. She seemed as stiff and formal as her diction. Jessica knew her: Nalla Tur from the Tupile Alliance. “We come to speak to you not only as the mother of Muad’Dib and the mother of the Imperial Regent, but also as the Duchess of Caladan.”

  The tall, gaunt man next to her had rich brown skin, red beads in his hair, and dull rounded gems set into the flesh of his cheeks. He spoke in a deep baritone voice. “We must talk to you of Landsraad matters. I am Hyron Baha from Midea. Regent Alia has ignored our many messages, but we hope that you can make our words heard.”

  Jessica massaged a soreness on the back of her own neck as she spoke cautiously. “Even if I agreed to speak on your behalf, you think too much of my power. I have no formal position here. I merely came for the funeral of my son, and I will go back to Caladan as soon as I can.”

  Nalla Tur answered in a brisk voice, “You are still a member of the Landsraad, by virtue of your rulership of Caladan. Whether or not you choose to attend Landsraad meetings in the new hall on Kaitain, you have legal respons
ibilities to the reconstituted Houses.”

  “I have many responsibilities. What is it you ask—and on whose behalf?”

  The third speaker was a squat and solid man who seemed to be made entirely of muscle adapted to a high-gravity world. Andaur, she guessed, from the man’s accent. “We four are members of formerly exiled noble Houses who took refuge behind Guild shields on Tupile. During the last year of Paul-Muad’Dib’s reign, he signed a treaty that effectively granted us amnesty and allowed us to return to the government without fear of trial or execution.”

  “Now the entire Landsraad—or what’s left of it—is shut out,” said the dark-haired woman.

  Hyron Baha crossed his arms over his chest, tossed his bead-studded strands of hair. “We have been in session on Kaitain with the representatives of ninety-eight other Houses, but the Regent grants the Lands-raad no real power. And now she has demanded that we surrender our atomics. Clearly, she means to disarm us all.”

  “What if we need to defend ourselves against an outside enemy? The Landsraad families are entitled to their atomics!” said the fourth representative, an obese, olive-skinned man with a shrill voice. Jessica didn’t recognize him, nor did he introduce himself.

  She made a placating sound. “There has been no outside enemy for ten thousand years. Maybe my daughter is more worried about intransigent Houses. Atomics haven’t been used against populations for centuries, so of what use are they to you? Given the past conspiracies against my son, Alia has legitimate concerns about having atomics turned against her.”

  The shrill-voiced man said, “And is it better to place them in the hands of unruly Fremen fanatics? Look at the damage already done in the Jihad!”

  Jessica could not dispute that, but there were things she could not say to this group. She showed no reaction, though they looked for one in her.