I must remember to fasten the boots slip-fashion to help my stillsuit’s pumping action, she thought. There are so many things to remember.
She could still taste their morning meal—the morsel of bird flesh and grain bound within a leaf with spice honey—and it came to her that the use of time was turned around here: night was the day of activity and day was the time of rest.
Night conceals; night is safest.
She unhooked her robe from its hammock pegs in a rock alcove, fumbled with the fabric in the dark until she found the top, slipped into it.
How to get a message out to the Bene Gesserit? she wondered. They would have to be told of the two strays in Arrakeen sanctuary.
Glowglobes came alight farther into the cave. She saw people moving there, Paul among them already dressed and with his hood thrown back to reveal the aquiline Atreides profile.
He had acted so strangely before they retired, she thought. Withdrawn. He was like one come back from the dead, not yet fully aware of his return, his eyes half shut and glassy with the inward stare. It made her think of his warning about the spice-impregnated diet: addictive.
Are there side effects? she wondered. He said it had something to do with his prescient faculty, but he has been strangely silent about what he sees.
Stilgar came from shadows to her right, crossed to the group beneath the glowglobes. She marked how he fingered his beard and the watchful, cat-stalking look of him.
Abrupt fear shot through Jessica as her senses awakened to the tensions visible in the people gathered around Paul—the stiff movements, the ritual positions.
“They have my countenance!” Stilgar rumbled.
Jessica recognized the man Stilgar confronted—Jamis! She saw then the rage in Jamis—the tight set of his shoulders.
Jamis, the man Paul bested! she thought.
“You know the rule, Stilgar,” Jamis said.
“Who knows it better?” Stilgar asked, and she heard the tone of placation in his voice, the attempt to smooth something over.
“I choose the combat,” Jamis growled.
Jessica sped across the cave, grasped Stilgar’s arm. “What is this?” she asked.
“It is the amtal rule,” Stilgar said. “Jamis is demanding the right to test your part in the legend.”
“She must be championed,” Jamis said. “If her champion wins, that’s the truth in it. But it’s said….” He glanced across the press of people. “… that she’d need no champion from the Fremen—which can mean only that she brings her own champion.”
He’s talking of single combat with Paul! Jessica thought.
She released Stilgar’s arm, took a half-step forward. “I’m always my own champion,” she said. “The meaning’s simple enough for….”
“You’ll not tell us our ways!” Jamis snapped. “Not without more proof than I’ve seen. Stilgar could’ve told you what to say last morning. He could’ve filled your mind full of the coddle and you could’ve bird-talked it to us, hoping to make a false way among us.”
I can take him, Jessica thought, but that might conflict with the way they interpret the legend. And again she wondered at the way the Missionaria Protectiva’s work had been twisted on this planet.
Stilgar looked at Jessica, spoke in a low voice but one designed to carry to the crowd’s fringe. “Jamis is one to hold a grudge, Sayyadina. Your son bested him and—”
“It was an accident!” Jamis roared. “There was witch-force at Tuono Basin and I’ll prove it now!”
“… and I’ve bested him myself,” Stilgar continued. “He seeks by this tahaddi challenge to get back at me as well. There’s too much of violence in Jamis for him ever to make a good leader—too much ghafla, the distraction. He gives his mouth to the rules and his heart to the sarfa, the turning away. No, he could never make a good leader. I’ve preserved him this long because he’s useful in a fight as such, but when he gets this carving anger on him he’s dangerous to his own society.”
“Stilgar-r-r-r!” Jamis rumbled.
And Jessica saw what Stilgar was doing, trying to enrage Jamis, to take the challenge away from Paul.
Stilgar faced Jamis, and again Jessica heard the soothing in the rumbling voice. “Jamis, he’s but a boy. He’s—”
“You named him a man,” Jamis said. “His mother says he’s been through the gom jabbar. He’s full-fleshed and with a surfeit of water. The ones who carried their pack say there’s literjons of water in it. Literjons! And us sipping our catch-pockets the instant they show dew-sparkle.”
Stilgar glanced at Jessica. “Is this true? Is there water in your pack?”
“Yes.”
“Literjons of it?”
“Two literjons.”
“What was intended with this wealth?”
Wealth? she thought. She shook her head, feeling the coldness in his voice.
“Where I was born, water fell from the sky and ran over the land in wide rivers,” she said. “There were oceans of it so broad you could not see the other shore. I’ve not been trained to your water discipline. I never before had to think of it this way.”
A sighing gasp arose from the people around them: “Water fell from the sky … it ran over the land.”
“Did you know there’re those among us who’ve lost from their catch-pockets by accident and will be in sore trouble before we reach Tabr this night?”
“How could I know?” Jessica shook her head. “If they’re in need, give them water from our pack.”
“Is that what you intended with this wealth?”
“I intended it to save life,” she said.
“Then we accept your blessing, Sayyadina.”
“You’ll not buy us off with water,” Jamis growled. “Nor will you anger me against yourself, Stilgar. I see you trying to make me call you out before I’ve proved my words.”
Stilgar faced Jamis. “Are you determined to press this fight against a child, Jamis?” His voice was low, venomous.
“She must be championed.”
“Even though she has my countenance?”
“I invoke the amtal rule,” Jamis said. “It’s my right.”
Stilgar nodded. “Then, if the boy does not carve you down, you’ll answer to my knife afterward. And this time I’ll not hold back the blade as I’ve done before.”
“You cannot do this thing,” Jessica said. “Paul’s just—”
“You must not interfere, Sayyadina,” Stilgar said. “Oh, I know you can take me and, therefore, can take anyone among us, but you cannot best us all united. This must be; it is the amtal rule.”
Jessica fell silent, staring at him in the green light of the glowglobes, seeing the demoniacal stiffness that had taken over his expression. She shifted her attention to Jamis, saw the brooding look to his brows and thought: I should’ve seen that before. He broods. He’s the silent kind, one who works himself up inside. I should’ve been prepared.
“If you harm my son,” she said, “You’ll have me to meet. I call you out now. I’ll carve you into a joint of—”
“Mother.” Paul stepped forward, touched her sleeve. “Perhaps if I explain to Jamis how—”
“Explain!” Jamis sneered.
Paul fell silent, staring at the man. He felt no fear of him. Jamis appeared clumsy in his movements and he had fallen so easily in their night encounter on the sand. But Paul still felt the nexus-boiling of this cave, still remembered the prescient visions of himself dead under a knife. There had been so few avenues of escape for him in that vision….
Stilgar said: “Sayyadina, you must step back now where—”
“Stop calling her Sayyadina!” Jamis said. “That’s yet to be proved. So she knows the prayer! What’s that? Every child among us knows it.”
He has talked enough, Jessica thought. I’ve the key to him. I could immobilize him with a word. She hesitated. But I cannot stop them all.
“You will answer to me then,” Jessica said, and she pitched her voice in a twisting tone
with a little whine in it and a catch at the end.
Jamis stared at her, fright visible on his face.
“I’ll teach you agony,” she said in the same tone. “Remember that as you fight. You’ll have agony such as will make the gom jabbar a happy memory by comparison. You will writhe with your entire—”
“She tries a spell on me!” Jamis gasped. He put his clenched right fist beside his ear. “I invoke the silence on her!”
“So be it then,” Stilgar said. He cast a warning glance at Jessica. “If you speak again, Sayyadina, we’ll know it’s your witchcraft and you’ll be forfeit.” He nodded for her to step back.
Jessica felt hands pulling her, helping her back, and she sensed they were not unkindly. She saw Paul being separated from the throng, the elfin-faced Chani whispering in his ear as she nodded toward Jamis.
A ring formed within the troop. More glowglobes were brought and all of them tuned to the yellow band.
Jamis stepped into the ring, slipped out of his robe and tossed it to someone in the crowd. He stood there in a cloudy gray slickness of stillsuit that was patched and marked by tucks and gathers. For a moment, he bent with his mouth to his shoulder, drinking from a catchpocket tube. Presently he straightened, peeled off and detached the suit, handed it carefully into the crowd. He stood waiting, clad in loin-cloth and some tight fabric over his feet, a crysknife in his right hand.
Jessica saw the girl-child Chani helping Paul, saw her press a crysknife handle into his palm, saw him heft it, testing the weight and balance. And it came to Jessica that Paul had been trained in prana and bindu, the nerve and the fiber—that he had been taught fighting in a deadly school, his teachers men like Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck, men who were legends in their own lifetimes. The boy knew the devious ways of the Bene Gesserit and he looked supple and confident.
But he’s only fifteen, she thought. And he has no shield. I must stop this. Somehow, there must be a way to…. She looked up, saw Stilgar watching her.
“You cannot stop it,” he said. “You must not speak.”
She put a hand over her mouth, thinking: I’ve planted fear in Jamis’ mind. It’ll slow him some … perhaps. If I could only pray—trulypray.
Paul stood alone now just into the ring, clad in the fighting trunks he’d worn under his stillsuit. He held a crysknife in his right hand; his feet were bare against the sand-gritted rock. Idaho had warned him time and again: “When in doubt of your surface, bare feet are best. ” And there were Chani’s words of instruction still in the front of his consciousness: “Jamis turns to the right with his knife after a parry. It’s a habit in him we’ve all seen. And he’ll aim for the eyes to catch a blink in which to slash you. And he can fight either hand; look out for a knife shift.”
But strongest in Paul so that he felt it with his entire body was training and the instinctual reaction mechanism that had been hammered into him day after day, hour after hour on the practice floor.
Gurney Halleck’s words were there to remember: “The good knife fighter thinks on point and blade and shearing-guard simultaneously. The point can also cut; the blade can also stab; the shearing-guard can also trap your opponent’s blade. ”
Paul glanced at the crysknife. There was no shearing-guard; only the slim round ring of the handle with its raised lips to protect the hand. And even so, he realized that he did not know the breaking tension of this blade, did not even know if it could be broken.
Jamis began sidling to the right along the edge of the ring opposite Paul.
Paul crouched, realizing then that he had no shield, but was trained to fighting with its subtle field around him, trained to react on defense with utmost speed while his attack would be timed to the controlled slowness necessary for penetrating the enemy’s shield. In spite of constant warning from his trainers not to depend on the shield’s mindless blunting of attack speed, he knew that shield-awareness was part of him.
Jamis called out in ritual challenge: “May thy knife chip and shatter!”
This knife will break then, Paul thought.
He cautioned himself that Jamis also was without shield, but the man wasn’t trained to its use, had no shield-fighter inhibitions.
Paul stared across the ring at Jamis. The man’s body looked like knotted whipcord on a dried skeleton. His crysknife shone milky yellow in the light of the glowglobes.
Fear coursed through Paul. He felt suddenly alone and naked standing in dull yellow light within this ring of people. Prescience had fed his knowledge with countless experiences, hinted at the strongest currents of the future and the strings of decision that guided them, but this was the real-now. This was death hanging on an infinite number of miniscule mischances.
Anything could tip the future here, he realized. Someone coughing in the troop of watchers, a distraction. A variation in a glowglobe’s brilliance, a deceptive shadow.
I’m afraid, Paul told himself.
And he circled warily opposite Jamis, repeating silently to himself the Bene Gesserit litany against fear. “Fear is the mind-killer….” It was a cool bath washing over him. He felt muscles untie themselves, become poised and ready.
“I’ll sheath my knife in your blood,” Jamis snarled. And in the middle of the last word he pounced.
Jessica saw the motion, stifled an outcry.
Where the man struck there was only empty air and Paul stood now behind Jamis with a clear shot at the exposed back.
Now, Paul! Now! Jessica screamed it in her mind.
Paul’s motion was slowly timed, beautifully fluid, but so slow it gave Jamis the margin to twist away, backing and turning to the right.
Paul withdrew, crouching low. “First, you must find my blood,” he said.
Jessica recognized the shield-fighter timing in her son, and it came over her what a two-edged thing that was. The boy’s reactions were those of youth and trained to a peak these people had never seen. But the attack was trained, too, and conditioned by the necessities of penetrating a shield barrier. A shield would repel too fast a blow, admit only the slowly deceptive counter. It needed control and trickery to get through a shield.
Does Paul see it? she asked herself. He must!
Again Jamis attacked, ink-dark eyes glaring, his body a yellow blur under the glowglobes.
And again Paul slipped away to return too slowly on the attack.
And again.
And again.
Each time, Paul’s counterblow came an instant late.
And Jessica saw a thing she hoped Jamis did not see. Paul’s defensive reactions were blindingly fast, but they moved each time at the precisely correct angle they would take if a shield were helping deflect part of Jamis’ blow.
“Is your son playing with that poor fool?” Stilgar asked. He waved her to silence before she could respond. “Sorry; you must remain silent.”
Now the two figures on the rock floor circled each other: Jamis with knife hand held far forward and tipped up slightly; Paul crouched with knife held low.
Again, Jamis pounced, and this time he twisted to the right where Paul had been dodging.
Instead of faking back and out, Paul met the man’s knife hand on the point of his own blade. Then the boy was gone, twisting away to the left and thankful for Chani’s warning.
Jamis backed into the center of the circle, rubbing his knife hand. Blood dripped from the injury for a moment, stopped. His eyes were wide and staring—two blue-black holes—studying Paul with a new wariness in the dull light of the glowglobes.
“Ah, that one hurt,” Stilgar murmured.
Paul crouched at the ready and, as he had been trained to do after first blood, called out: “Do you yield?”
“Hah!” Jamis cried.
An angry murmur arose from the troop.
“Hold!” Stilgar called out. “The lad doesn’t know our rule.” Then, to Paul: “There can be no yielding in the tahaddi-challenge. Death is the test of it.”
Jessica saw Paul swallow hard. And she t
hought: He’s never killed a man like this … in the hot blood of a knife fight. Can he do it?
Paul circled slowly right, forced by Jamis’ movement. The prescient knowledge of the time-boiling variables in this cave came back to plague him now. His new understanding told him there were too many swiftly compressed decisions in this fight for any clear channel ahead to show itself.
Variable piled on variable—that was why this cave lay as a blurred nexus in his path. It was like a gigantic rock in the flood, creating maelstroms in the current around it.
“Have an end to it, lad,” Stilgar muttered. “Don’t play with him.”
Paul crept farther into the ring, relying on his own edge in speed.
Jamis backed now that the realization swept over him—that this was no soft offworlder in the tahaddi ring, easy prey for a Fremen crysknife.
Jessica saw the shadow of desperation in the man’s face. Now is when he’s most dangerous, she thought. Now he’s desperate and can do anything. He sees that this is not like a child of his own people, but a fighting machine born and trained to it from infancy. Now the fear I planted in him has come to bloom.
And she found in herself a sense of pity for Jamis—an emotion tempered by awareness of the immediate peril to her son.
Jamis could do anything … any unpredictable thing, she told herself. She wondered then if Paul had glimpsed this future, if he were reliving this experience. But she saw the way her son moved, the beads of perspiration on his face and shoulders, the careful wariness visible in the flow of muscles. And for the first time she sensed, without understanding it, the uncertainty factor in Paul’s gift.
Paul pressed the fight now, circling but not attacking. He had seen the fear in his opponent. Memory of Duncan Idaho’s voice flowed through Paul’s awareness: “When your opponent fears you, then’s the moment when you give the fear its own rein, give it the time to work on him. Let it become terror. The terrified man fights himself. Eventually, he attacks in desperation. That is the most dangerous moment, but the terrified man can be trusted usually to make a fatal mistake. You are being trained here to detect these mistakes and use them.”
The crowd in the cavern began to mutter.
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