a shell within which outrages had been committed.
'Where's Ghanima?' he asked.
She waved the question aside. 'I've sent her with Irulan to stay in Stilgar's keeping.'
Neutral territory, he thought. There's been another negotiation with rebellious tribes. She's losing ground and doesn't know it... or does she? Is there another reason? Has Stilgar gone over to her?
'The betrothal,' Alia mused. 'What are conditions in the Corrino House?'
'Salusa swarms with outrine relatives, all working upon Farad'n, hoping for a share in his return to power.'
'And she's training him in the Bene Gesserit...'
'Is it not fitting for Ghanima's husband?'
Alia smiled to herself, thinking of Ghanima's adamant rage. Let Farad'n be trained. Jessica was training a corpse. It would all work out.
'I must consider this at length,' she said. 'You're very quiet, Duncan.'
'I await your questions.'
'I see. You know, I was very angry with you. Taking her to Farad'n!'
'You commanded me to make it real.'
'I was forced to put out the report that you'd both been taken captive,' she said.
'I obeyed your orders.'
'You're so literal at times, Duncan. You almost frighten me. But if you hadn't, well...'
'The Lady Jessica's out of harm's way,' he said. 'And for Ghanima's sake we should be grateful that -'
'Exceedingly grateful,' she agreed. And she thought: He's no longer trustworthy. He has that damnable Atreides loyalty. I must make an excuse to send him away... and have him eliminated. An accident, of course.
She touched his cheek.
Idaho forced himself to respond to the caress, taking her hand and kissing it.
'Duncan, Duncan, how sad it is,' she said. 'But I cannot keep you here with me. Too much is happening and I've so few I can completely trust.'
He released her hand, waited.
'I was forced to send Ghanima to Tabr,' she said. 'Things are in deep unrest here. Raiders from the Broken Lands breached the qanats at Kagga Basin and spilled all of their waters into the sands. Arrakeen was on short rations. The Basin's alive with sandtrout yet, reaping the water harvest. They're being dealt with, of course, but we're spread very thin.'
He'd already noted how few amazons of Alia's guard were to be seen in the Keep. And he thought: The Maquis of the Inner Desert will keep on probing her defenses. Doesn't she know that?
'Tabr is still neutral territory,' she said. 'Negotiations are continuing there right now. Javid's there with a delegation from the Priesthood. But I'd like you at Tabr to watch them, especially Irulan.'
'She is Corrino,' he agreed.
But he saw in her eyes that she was rejecting him. How transparent this Alia-creature had become!
She waved a hand. 'Go now, Duncan, before I soften and keep you here beside me. I've missed you so...'
'And I've missed you,' he said, allowing all of his grief to flow into his voice.
She stared at him, startled by the sadness. Then: 'For my sake, Duncan.' And she thought: Too bad, Duncan. She said: 'Zia will take you to Tabr. We need the 'thopter back here.'
Her pet amazon, he thought: I must be careful of that one.
'I understand,' he said, once more taking her hand and kissing it. He stared at the dear flesh which once had been his Alia's. He could not bring himself to look at her face as he left. Someone else stared back at him from her eyes.
As he mounted to the Keep's roof pad, Idaho probed a growing sense of unanswered questions. The meeting with Alia had been extremely trying for the mentat part of him which kept reading data signs. He waited beside the 'thopter with one of the Keep's amazons, stared grimly southward. Imagination took his gaze beyond the Shield Wall to Sietch Tabr. Why does Zia take me to Tabr? Returning a 'thopter is a menial task. What is the delay? Is Zia getting special instructions?
Idaho glanced at the watchful guard, mounted to the pilot's position in the 'thopter. He leaned out, said: 'Tell Alia I'll send the 'thopter back immediately with one of Stilgar's men.'
Before the guard could protest he closed the door and started the 'thopter. He could see her standing there indecisively. Who could question Alia's consort? He had the 'thopter airborne before she could make up her mind what to do.
Now, alone in the 'thopter, he allowed his grief to spend itself in great wracking sobs. Alia was gone. They had parted forever. Tears flowed from his Tleilaxu eyes and he whispered: 'Let all the waters of Dune flow into the sand. They will not match my tears.'
This was a non-mentat excess, though, and he recognized it as such, forcing himself to sober assessment of present necessities. The 'thopter demanded his attention. The reactions of flying brought him some relief, and he had himself once more in hand.
Ghanima with Stilgar again. And Irulan.
Why had Zia been designated to accompany him? He made it a mentat problem and the answer chilled him. I was to have a fatal accident.
= = = = = =
This rocky shrine to the skull of a ruler grants no prayers. It has become the grave of lamentations. Only the wind hears the voice of this place. The cries of night creatures and the passing wonder of two moons, all say his day has ended. No more supplicants come. The visitors have gone from the feast. How bare the pathway down this mountain. -Lines at the Shrine of an Atreides Duke, Anon.
The thing had the deceptive appearance of simplicity to Leto: avoiding the vision, do that which has not been seen. He knew the trap in his thought, how the casual threads of a locked future twisted themselves together until they held you fast, but he had a new grip on those threads. Nowhere had he seen himself running from Jacurutu. The thread to Sabiha must be cut first.
He crouched now in the last daylight at the eastern edge of the rock which protected Jacurutu. His Fremkit had produced energy tablets and food. He waited now for strength. To the west lay Lake Azrak, the gypsum plain where once there'd been open water in the days before the worm. Unseen to the east lay the Bene Sherk, a scattering of new settlements encroaching upon the open bled. To the south lay the Tanzerouft, the Land of Terror: thirty-eight hundred kilometers of wasteland broken only by patches of grass-locked dunes and windtraps to water them - the work of the ecological transformation remaking the landscape of Arrakis. They were serviced by airborne teams and no one stayed for long.
I will go south, he told himself. Gurney will expect me to do that. This was not the moment to do the completely unexpected.
It would be dark soon and he could leave this temporary hiding place. He stared at the southern skyline. There was a whistling of dun sky along that horizon, rolling there like smoke, a burning line of undulant dust - a storm. He watched the high center of the storm rising up out of the Great Flat like a questing worm. For a full minute he watched the center, saw that it did not move to the right or the left. The old Fremen saying leaped into his mind: When the center does not move, you are in its path.
That storm changed matters.
For a moment he stared back westward the direction of Tabr, feeling the deceptive grey-tan peace of the desert evening, seeing the white gypsum pan edged by wind-rounded pebbles, the desolate emptiness with its unreal surface of glaring white reflecting dust clouds. Nowhere in any vision had he seen himself surviving the grey serpent of a mother storm or buried too deeply in sand to survive. There was only that vision of rolling in wind... but that might come later.
And a storm was out there, winding across many degrees of latitude, whipping its world into submission. It could be risked. There were old stories, always heard from a friend of a friend, that one could lock an exhausted
