God Emperor of Dune (14 page)
How precisely she moves,
he thought.
he thought.
The precision, he knew, came from a passionate simplicity.
She wore her Fish Speaker blues and a cape-robe without the hawk at the breast. Once past the guard station at the foot of the tower, she had thrown back the cibus mask he required her to wear on these personal visits. Her blocky, muscular body was like that of many others among his guardians, but her face was like no other in all of his memory—almost square with a mouth so wide it seemed to extend around the cheeks, an illusion caused by deep creases at the corners. Her eyes were pale green, the closely cropped hair like old ivory. Her forehead added to the square effect, almost flat with pale eyebrows which often went unnoticed because of the compelling eyes. The nose was a straight, shallow line which terminated close to the thin-lipped mouth.
When Nayla spoke, her great jaws opened and closed like those of some primordial animal. Her strength, known to few outside the corps of Fish Speakers, was legendary there. Leto had seen her lift a one-hundred-kilo man with one hand. Her presence on Arrakis had been arranged originally without Moneo’s intervention, although the majordomo knew Leto employed his Fish Speakers as secret agents.
Leto turned his head away from the plodding image and looked out the wide opening beside him at the desert to the south. The colors of the distant rocks danced in his awareness—brown, gold, a deep amber. There was a line of pink on a faraway cliff the exact hue of an egret’s feathers. Egrets did not exist anymore except in Leto’s memory, but he could place that pale pastel ribbon of stone against an inner eye and it was as though the extinct bird flew past him.
The climb, he knew, should be starting to tire even Nayla. She paused at last to rest, stopping at a point two steps past the three-quarter mark, precisely the place where she rested every time. It was part of her precision, one of the reasons he had brought her back from the distant garrison on Seprek.
A Dune hawk floated past the opening beside Leto only a few wing lengths from the tower wall. Its attention was held on the shadows at the base of the Citadel. Small animals sometimes emerged there, Leto knew. Dimly on the horizon beyond the hawk’s path he could see a line of clouds.
What a strange thing those were to the Old Fremen in him: clouds on Arrakis and rain and open water.
Leto reminded the inner voices:
Except for this last desert, my Sareer, the re-modeling of Dune into verdant Arrakis has gone on remorselessly since the first days of my rule.
Except for this last desert, my Sareer, the re-modeling of Dune into verdant Arrakis has gone on remorselessly since the first days of my rule.
The influence of geography on history went mostly unrecognized, Leto thought. Humans tended to look more at the influence of history on geography.
Who owns this river passage? This verdant valley? This peninsula? This planet?
None of us.
Nayla was climbing once more, her gaze fixed upward on the stairs she must traverse. Leto’s thoughts locked on her.
In many ways, she is the most useful assistant I have ever had. I am her God. She worships me quite unquestioningly. Even when I playfully attack her faith, she takes this merely as testing. She knows herself superior to any test.
When he had sent her to the rebellion and had told her to obey Siona in all things, she did not question. When Nayla doubted, even when she framed her doubts in words, her own thoughts were enough to restore faith … or had been enough. Recent messages, however, made it clear that Nayla required the Holy Presence to rebuild her inner strength.
Leto recalled the first conversation with Nayla, the woman trembling in her eagerness to please.
“Even if Siona sends you to kill me, you must obey. She must never learn that you serve me.”
“No one can kill you, Lord.”
“But you must obey Siona.”
“Of course, Lord. That is your command.”
“You must obey her in all things.”
“I will do it, Lord.”
Another test. Nayla does not question my tests. She treats them as flea bites. Her Lord commands? Nayla obeys. I must not let anything change that relationship.
She would have made a superb Shadout in the old days, Leto thought. It was one of the reasons he had given Nayla a crysknife, a real one preserved from Sietch Tabr. It had belonged to one of Stilgar’s wives. Nayla wore it in a concealed sheath beneath her robes, more a talisman than a weapon. He had given it to her in the original ritual, a ceremony which had surprised him by evoking emotions he had thought forever buried.
“This is the tooth of Shai-Hulud.”
He had extended the blade to her on his silvery-skinned hands.
“Take it and you become part of both past and future. Soil it and the past will give you no future.”
Nayla had accepted the blade, then the sheath.
“Draw the blood of a finger,” Leto had commanded.
Nayla had obeyed.
“Sheath the blade. Never remove it without drawing blood.”
Again, Nayla had obeyed.
As Leto watched the three-dimensional image of Nayla’s approach, his reflections on that old ceremony were touched by sadness. Unless fixed in the Old Fremen way, the blade would grow increasingly brittle and useless. It would keep its crysknife shape throughout Nayla’s life, but little longer.
I have thrown away a bit of the past.
How sad it was that the Shadout of old had become today’s Fish Speaker. And a true crysknife had been used to bind a servant more strongly to her master. He knew that some thought his Fish Speakers were really priestesses— Leto’s answer to the Bene Gesserit.
“He creates another religion,”
the Bene Gesserit said.
the Bene Gesserit said.
Nonsense! I have not created a religion. I
am
the religion!
am
the religion!
Nayla entered the tower sanctuary and stood three paces from Leto’s cart, her gaze lowered in proper subservience.
Still in his memories, Leto said: “Look at me, woman!”
She obeyed.
“I have created a holy obscenity!” he said. “This religion built around my person disgusts me!”
“Yes, Lord.”
Nayla’s green eyes on the gilded cushions of her cheeks stared out at him without questioning, without comprehension, without the need of either response.
If I sent her out to collect the stars, she would go and she would attempt it. She thinks I am testing her again. I do believe she could anger me.
“This damnable religion should end with me!” Leto shouted. “Why should I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within— Empires and individuals alike! It’s all the same.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Religions create radicals and fanatics like you!”
“Thank You, Lord.”
The short-lived pseudo-rage sank back out of sight into the depths of his memories. Nothing dented the hard surface of Nayla’s faith.
“Topri has reported to me through Moneo,” Leto said. “Tell me about this Topri.”
“Topri is a worm.”
“Isn’t that what you call
me
when you’re among the rebels?”
me
when you’re among the rebels?”
“I obey my Lord in everything.”
Touché!
“Topri is not worth cultivating then?” Leto asked.
“Siona assessed him correctly. He is clumsy. He says things which others will repeat, thus exposing his hand in the matter. Within seconds after Kobat began to speak, she had confirmation that Topri was a spy.”
Everyone agrees, even Moneo,
Leto thought.
Topri is not a good spy.
Leto thought.
Topri is not a good spy.
The agreement amused Leto. The petty machinations muddied water which remained completely transparent to him. The performers, however, still suited his designs.
“Siona does not suspect you?” Leto asked.
“I am not clumsy.”
“Do you know why I summoned you?”
“To test my faith.”
Ahhh, Nayla. How little you know of testing.
“I want your assessment of Siona. I want to see it on your face and see it in your movements and hear it in your voice.” Leto said. “Is she ready?”
“The Fish Speakers need that one, Lord. Why do You risk losing her?”
“Forcing the issue is the surest way of losing what I treasure most in her,” Leto said. “She must come to me with all of her strengths intact.”
Nayla lowered her gaze. “As my Lord commands.”
Leto recognized the response. It was a Nayla reaction to whatever she failed to understand.
“Will she survive the test, Nayla?”
“As my Lord describes the test …” Nayla lifted her gaze to Leto’s face, shrugged. “I do not know, Lord. Certainly, she is strong. She was the only one to survive the wolves. But she is ruled by hate.”
“Quite naturally. Tell me, Nayla, what will she do with the things she stole from me?”
“Did Topri not inform you about the books which they say contain Your Sacred Words?”
Odd how she can capitalize words only with her voice,
Leto thought. He spoke curtly.
Leto thought. He spoke curtly.
“Yes, yes. The Ixians have a copy and soon the Guild and Sisterhood as well will be hard at work on them.”
“What are those books, Lord?”
“They are my words for my people. I want them to be read. What I want to know is what Siona has said about the Citadel charts she took.”
“She says there is a great hoard of melange beneath Your Citadel, Lord, and the charts will reveal it.”
“The charts will not reveal it. Will she tunnel?”
“She seeks Ixian tools for that.”
“Ix will not provide them.”
“Is there such a hoard of spice, Lord?”
“Yes.”
“There is a story about how Your hoard is defended, Lord. That Arrakis itself would be destroyed if anyone tried to steal Your melange. Is it true?”
“Yes. And that would shatter the Empire. Nothing would survive—not Guild or Sisterhood, not Ix or Tleilaxu, not even the Fish Speakers.”
She shuddered, then: “I will not let Siona try to get Your spice.”
“Nayla! I commanded you to obey Siona in everything. Is this how you serve me?”
“Lord?” She stood in fear of his anger, closer to a loss of faith than he had ever seen her. It was the crisis he had created, knowing how it must end. Slowly, Nayla relaxed. He could see the shape of her thought as though she had laid it out for him in illuminated words.
The ultimate test!
“You will return to Siona and guard her life with your own,” Leto said. “That is the task I set for you and that you accepted. It is why you were chosen. It is why you carry a blade from Stilgar’s household.”
Her right hand went to the crysknife concealed beneath her robe.
How sure it is,
Leto thought,
that a weapon can lock a person into a predictable pattern of behavior.
Leto thought,
that a weapon can lock a person into a predictable pattern of behavior.
He stared with fascination at Nayla’s rigid body. Her eyes were empty of everything except adoration.
The ultimate rhetorical despotism … and I despise it!
“Go then!” he barked.
Nayla turned and fled the Holy Presence.
Is it worth this?
Leto wondered.
Leto wondered.
But Nayla had told him what he needed to know. Nayla had renewed her faith and revealed with accuracy the thing which Leto could not find in Siona’s fading image. Nayla’s instincts were to be trusted.
Siona has reached that explosive moment which I require.
The Duncans always think it odd that I choose women for combat forces, but my Fish Speakers are a temporary army in every sense. While they can be violent and vicious, women are profoundly different from men in their dedication to battle. The cradle of genesis ultimately predisposes them to behavior more protective of life. They have proved to be the best keepers of the Golden Path. I reinforce this in my design for their training. They are set aside for a time from ordinary routines. I give them special sharings which they can look back upon with pleasure for the rest of their lives. They come of age in the company of their sisters in preparation for events more profound. What you share in such companionship always prepares you for greater things. The haze of nostalgia covers their days among their sisters, making those days into something different than they were. That’s the way today changes history. All contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but few realize it.
—THE STOLEN JOURNALS
After sending word to the Fish Speakers, Leto descended to the crypt in the late evening. He had found it best to begin the first interview with a new Duncan Idaho in a darkened room where the ghola could hear Leto describe himself before actually seeing the pre-worm body. There was a small side room carved in black stone off the central rotunda of the crypt which suited this requirement. The chamber was large enough to accommodate Leto on his cart, but the ceiling was low. Illumination came from hidden glowglobes which he controlled. There was only the one door, but it was in two segments—one swinging wide to admit the Royal Cart, the other a small portal in human dimensions.
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