ceremony in the Great Hall went on for hours. Tribe after Fremen tribe passed before him through their delegates and their Naibs. Each group bore gifts fitting for a god of terrifying powers, a god of vengeance who promised them peace.
He'd cowed them into submission the previous week, performing for the assembled arifa of all the tribes. The Judges had seen him walk through a pit of fire, emerging unscathed to demonstrate that his skin bore no marks by asking them to study him closely. He'd ordered them to strike him with knives, and the impenetrable skin had sealed his face while they struck at him to no avail. Acids ran off him with only the lightest mist of smoke. He'd eaten their poisons and laughed at them.
At the end he'd summoned a worm and stood facing them at its mouth. He'd moved from that to the landing field at Arrakeen, where he'd brazenly toppled a Guild frigate by lifting one of its landing fins.
The arifa had reported all of this with a fearful awe, and now the tribal delegates had come to seal their submission.
The vaulted space of the Great Hall with its acoustical dampening systems tended to absorb sharp noises, but a constant rustling of moving feet insinuated itself into the senses, riding on dust and the flint odors brought in from the open.
Jessica, who'd refused to attend, watched from a high spy hole behind the throne. Her attention was caught by Farad'n and the realization that both she and Farad'n had been outmaneuvered. Of course Leto and Ghanima had anticipated the Sisterhood! The twins could consult within themselves a host of Bene Gesserits greater than all now living in the Empire.
She was particularly bitter at the way the Sisterhood's mythology had trapped Alia. Fear built on fear! The habits of generations had imprinted the fate of Abomination upon her. Alia had known no hope. Of course she'd succumbed. Her fate made the accomplishment of Leto and Ghanima even more difficult to face. Not one way out of the trap, but two. Ghanima's victory over the inner lives and her insistence that Alia deserved only pity were the bitterest things of all. Hypnotic suppression under stress linked to the wooing of a benign ancestor had saved Ghanima. They might have saved Alia. But without hope, nothing had been attempted until it was too late. Alia's water had been poured upon the sand.
Jessica sighed, shifted her attention to Leto on the throne. A giant canopic jar containing the water of Muad'Dib occupied a place of honor at his right elbow. He'd boasted to Jessica that his father-within laughed at this gesture even while admiring it.
That jar and the boasting had firmed her resolve not to participate in this ritual. As long as she lived, she knew she could never accept Paul speaking through Leto's mouth. She rejoiced that House Atreides had survived, but the things-that-might-have-been were beyond bearing.
Farad'n sat cross-legged beside the jar of Muad'Dib's water. It was the position of the Royal Scribe, an honor newly conferred and newly accepted.
Farad'n felt that he was adjusting nicely to these new realities although Tyekanik still raged and promised dire consequences. Tyekanik and Stilgar had formed a partnership of distrust which seemed to amuse Leto.
In the hours of the homage ceremony, Farad'n had gone from awe to boredom to awe. They were an endless stream of humanity, these peerless fighting men. Their loyalty renewed to the Atreides on the throne could not be questioned. They stood in submissive terror before him, completely daunted by what the arifa had reported.
At last it drew to a close. The final Naib stood before Leto - Stilgar in the 'rearguard position of honor.' Instead of panniers heavy with spice, fire jewels, or any of the other costly gifts which lay in mounds around the throne, Stilgar bore a headband of braided spice-fiber. The Atreides Hawk had been worked in gold and green into its design.
Ghanima recognized it and shot a sidewise glance at Leto.
Stilgar placed the headband on the second step below the throne, bowed low. 'I give you the headband worn by your sister when I took her into the desert to protect her,' he said.
Leto suppressed a smile.
'I know you've fallen on hard times, Stilgar,' Leto said. 'Is there something here you would have in return?' He gestured at the piles of costly gifts.
'No, My Lord.'
'I accept your gift then,' Leto said. He rocked forward, brought up the hem of Ghanima's robe, ripped a thin strip from it. 'In return, I give you this bit of Ghanima's robe, the robe she wore when she was stolen from your desert camp, forcing me to save her.'
Stilgar accepted the cloth in a trembling hand. 'Do you mock me, My Lord?'
'Mock you? By my name, Stilgar, never would I mock you. I have given you a gift without price. I command you to carry it always next to your heart as a reminder that all humans are prone to error and all leaders are human.'
A thin chuckle escaped Stilgar. 'What a Naib you would have made!'
'What a Naib I am! Naib of Naibs. Never forget that!'
'As you say, My Lord.' Stilgar swallowed, remembering the report of his arifa. And he thought: Once I thought of slaying him. Now it's too late. His glance fell on the jar, a graceful opaque gold capped with green. 'That is water of my tribe.'
'And mine,' Leto said. 'I command you to read the inscription upon its side. Read it aloud that all may hear it.'
Stilgar cast a questioning glance at Ghanima, but she returned it with a lift of her chin, a cold response which sent a chill through him. Were these Atreides imps bent on holding him to answer for his impetuosity and his mistakes?
'Read it,' Leto said, pointing.
Slowly Stilgar mounted the steps, bent to look at the jar. Presently he read aloud: 'This water is the ultimate essence, a source of outward streaming creativity. Though motionless, this water is the means of all movement.'
'What does it mean, My Lord?' Stilgar whispered. He felt awed by the words, touched within himself in a place he could not understand.
'The body of Muad'Dib is a dry shell like that abandoned by an insect,' Leto said. 'He mastered the inner world while holding the outer in contempt, and this led to catastrophe. He mastered the outer world while excluding the inner world, and this delivered his descendants to the demons. The Golden Elixir will vanish from Dune, yet Muad'Dib's seed goes on, and his water moves our universe.'
Stilgar bowed his head. Mystical things always left him in turmoil.
'The beginning and the end are one,' Leto said. 'You live in air but do not see it. A phase has closed. Out of that closing grows the beginning of its opposite. Thus, we will have Kralizec. Everything returns later in changed form. You have felt thoughts in your head; your descendants will feel thoughts in their bellies. Return to Sietch Tabr, Stilgar. Gurney Halleck will join you there as my advisor in your Council.'
'Don't you trust me, My Lord?' Stilgar's voice was low.
'Completely, else I'd not send Gurney to you. He'll begin recruiting the new force we'll need soon. I accept your pledge of fealty, Stilgar. You are dismissed.'
Stilgar bowed low, backed off the steps, turned and left the hall. The other Naibs fell into step behind him according to the Fremen principle that 'the last shall be first.' But some of their queries could be heard on the throne as they departed.
'What were you talking about up there, Stil? What does that mean, those words on Muad'Dib's water?'
Leto spoke to Farad'n. 'Did you get all of that, Scribe?'
'Yes, My Lord.'
'My grandmother tells me she trained you well in the mnemonic processes of the Bene Gesserit. That's good. I don't want you scribbling beside me.'
'As you command, My Lord.'
'Come and stand before me,' Leto said.
Farad'n obeyed, more than ever thankful for Jessica's training. When you accepted the fact that Leto no longer was human, no longer could think as humans thought, the course of his Golden Path became ever more frightening.
Leto looked up at Farad'n. The guards stood well back out of earshot. Only the counselors of the Inner
