Muad'Dib. The one who points the way.
Chani turned the words in her mind over and over as she travelled further north. The landscape became gentler, but simultaneously more dangerous. The more habitable it became to humans, the more likely it was she'd be caught by a Harkonnen raid, and those weren't known for their mercy. Chani took additional precautions, careful to travel by sandworm only at night, and hiding in the sand whenever she heard the hint of an ornithopter. Her progress was accordingly slow, and left her plenty of time to think.
The conversation with Geoff had been unsettling. The guard at Sietch Rifana told her he'd always been one of the Remnant, raised from childhood in the old tradition, yet when he'd met Muad'Dib, something had shifted, or so it seemed.
He doesn't seem like much of a warrior when you first see him, he had told Chani. Thin, wiry—not much more impressive at a glance than his namesake. They say he used to be water-fat, and his eyes were the dull eyes of a foreigner, but obviously now he looks like any Fremen, although still on the paler side.
Why did you follow him? she'd asked the man.
Geoff had paused before replying, as though weighing his answer carefully. He had many victories in battle. Many more than we ever had before he came. He understands the Harkonnens on a far deeper level than we do.
Is he from the household of a foreign lord? she'd asked, her unease growing.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn he was a foreign lord himself. He has that air about him, of one taught to command from a young age.
Chani had frowned at that. I can't imagine the Fedaykin would take it well, to have a foreigner ordering them around.
No, no, you mistake my meaning, Geoff had laughed. He wasn't the least bit arrogant. He wouldn't even let the southern fanatics among us call him the Lisan al-Gaib. It was just... When I got to know him, I wanted to follow him. He clearly knew what he was doing.
The more she heard about Muad'Dib, the more the aura of mystery surrounding him seemed to intensify.
Whatever part this foreigner has to play, she reminded herself, it ultimately can't be that of leadership. He is a foreigner. And besides, you've already found the Mahdi.
A smile came unbidden to her lips as she thought of Uliet, the naib of Sietch Saajid. He was young for his position, and unlike most naibs, had not won his station through bloodshed. The previous naib had died of disease, and Uliet was chosen through popular support, no challengers standing against him. He was one of the first who'd willingly converted after hearing her prophesies, and almost all of his sietch had followed in his footsteps. He was a born leader, earnest and sensible and wise beyond his years. People naturally gravitated toward him, attracted to the way he led by example, persuading and inspiring rather than coercing and threatening as lesser men did. His conversion had been Chani's most significant achievement during the early days of her proselytizing, and it proved to be the gateway to many other successes.
Three months ago, Chani had anointed him as Mahdi and had tasked him with uniting the southern tribes under his leadership, while she travelled north and tried to rescue whatever could be salvaged. She prayed daily for his success. There was a part of her that kept wondering if her father had born any resemblance to Uliet. If he had, she could understand how Mother had fallen for him so easily.
*
Chani never managed to reach Sietch Tabr.
Fremen scouts found her and seized her, evidently considering it appropriate to take her captive first and ask questions later. Chani didn't protest or struggle against them. She didn't foresee any benefit likely to arise from that. Instead, she sat in the stilltent they'd erected for her in the middle of a dreary, stony cavern, focusing on her breathing while she recited the Ancient One's songs of praise in her head. After a few hours, she heard footsteps approaching behind her, and the tent flap was opened.
"Muad'Dib," said a feminine voice, "looks like she's a Harkonnen spy. She carries no crysknife."
"We'll find out soon enough," agreed the other. A man. "I need to speak to her first."
The woman came next to Chani, cutting off her bonds with an efficient slash. She was clearly Fedaykin, her movements infused with their signature lethal grace. She was young, perhaps Chani's age. She grabbed Chani's shoulder, firm but not violent, and turned her around to face Muad'Dib.
Chani was shocked by how young he seemed, no older than herself. Barring that, he matched Geoff's description exactly. Although, thought Chani wryly, Geoff left out the fact that Muad'Dib's visage is an indisputably pleasant sight for young women to look at.
"Your name, your rank, and your mission," he told her in a friendly drawl that somehow sounded incredibly threatening. "And please don't try to lie. The last Harkonnen spy who tried that was begging me for death before the end."
She raised her head, meeting his gaze and pretending to be undaunted. "I am Chani, daughter of Liet, Prophetess of the Ancient One."
Or rather, that was what she tried to say. However, the words never left her mouth.
Instead, she heard herself saying, "You're far more Harkonnen than I am."
Surprise flashed across his features, accompanied by rage. The emotions were gone as soon as they arrived, replaced by a derisive curl of the lip. He crouched down to her level, eyes never leaving hers, voice dropping lower. "Let's try that again, shall we? I have all day, and you'll run out of patience long before I do."
"Ask your mother if she's not Baron Harkonnen's own daughter."
Chani couldn't stop the words, no more than she could stop her own heart from beating. Great One, protect me, she thought. He'll kill me by the end of this.
"You're trying to provoke me into killing you," said Muad'Dib coolly. "A loyal spy, trying to take her secrets to the grave."
"Your father didn't know," said Chani, breath coming quick and shallow. "One can only imagine what he would've thought about the origins of his beloved concubine."
Muad'Dib stared at her, expressionless. "So you presume to know who my father was, is that so?"
"Are you not Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides, deposed duke of Arrakis, known to your sietch as Usul?"
There was a crysknife at her neck now, pressing against her skin, nearly biting into flesh. Chani didn't dare swallow the moisture in her mouth.
"Anything else you know?" murmured Muad'Dib, leaning closer, his lips nearly brushing against her ear.
"I know your mother is a foreign priestess and she fans the flames of your false prophecy. I know you are what her sisters in witchcraft call the 'Shortening of the Way', the man who can drink the sandworm's poison and survive. I know you've dreamt of me, and that those dreams have ceased two years ago, on the day the Great One called upon me. I know you tell yourself you wish for a life of peace, and feel haunted by a terrible purpose, but truly you thirst for revenge."
"Are you done?" he questioned flatly, eyes narrowing.
"I know you've seen the war coming," she said, voice shaking and cracking, yet pouring out of her regardless. "I know you feel powerless to stop it. I know that if you drink the water of life, you'll come to regret it. You think it'll grant you prescience. It will. It'll lock you into a predetermined path, so that you can no longer choose. Or so you'll tell yourself, while you commit horror after horror, swearing the result was inevitable, all while you choose the safest path for yourself."
The crysknife was cutting her throat now, drawing blood. Chani could feel it dripping down her neck. Muad'Dib's expression matched the darkness of a coriolis storm, yet he said nothing.
"What makes you think you're worth more than billions?" Her voice dropped to an exhausted whisper. "Is your blood redder than theirs? Have they not loved? Have they not sacrificed? Do they not draw breath as you do? Inevitable, you'll tell yourself. It could not have been prevented. And all your worshipers will vow that it was so. They will sing your praises, glorifying your atrocities, calling you warrior and mystic, ogre and saint. They will say that you are more than a man; we cannot measure you by ordinary standards. Yet the Great One will know the truth, and so will you."
He pulled the crysknife away with an abrupt movement, as though stung by a scorpion.
"Enough." His voice was filled with the sibilant sound of witchcraft, a compulsion she couldn't resist. "Tell me truthfully who you are."
"Chani, daughter of Liet, of Sietch Hagga. Prophetess of the Ancient One." She tried to suppress the last word, but it was impossible. "Sihaya."
"Sihaya," he repeated slowly, as though tasting the word. "A beautiful name. Whom do you serve?" Again he used the witch-voice.
"I serve no foreign lords, only the Ancient One, Usul," she responded, worn out by the entire ordeal.
She used his private name without thinking, perhaps because he used her own, perhaps because all the forced revelations created a kind of involuntary, strained intimacy between them. The Fedaykin girl, standing to the side, glared at Chani wordlessly.
Usul, as she thought of him now, rose to his feet in a fluid motion. "Release her back to the desert, Shishakli," he said. "She's no danger to us."
"She's a madwoman," said the Fedaykin girl, stiff with disapproval.
"Perhaps, but she's not a threat, so it makes no difference. She doesn't know anything beyond what she's said. The words were not her original thoughts, but ones that have been dictated to her. She's a tool, being used by others." He stared down at Chani, head positioned in a supercilious tilt. "She has no abilities of her own. She can't be used to collect information, only to disseminate the propaganda her masters deem useful."
"And who are her masters?" demanded Shishakli.
"Most likely the Bene Gesserit, perhaps in collusion with others," said Usul. "A skilled Mentant must have been involved, formulating the words he predicted were most likely to unbalance and nudge me in the desired direction. But there's no point in interrogating her. She's merely the conduit through which the message passes."
"Usul," said Chani, "don't linger in the north for more than a week after the coming solar eclipse. A fortnight later, the entire north will be destroyed. Bring your people to safety in the south."
"Madwoman," Shishakli muttered, grabbing Chani's arm and tugging her up to a standing position.
"Don't drink the water of life," said Chani. "When all I've told you comes to pass, find me in the south. I will guide you."
Shishakli dragged Chani out of the cavern and down the hill, past a group of Fedaykin who watched them silently. They then turned west and headed towards the sand dunes. Soon the cavern was out of sight.
"This is worm territory," said Chani, surprised at the direction they were headed in.
Shishakli ignored her, striding ahead.
"I could've been Fedaykin," said Chani with a touch of wistfulness, "if only I'd spoken different words when I was twelve years old. I would've come up here and fought by your side. Perhaps the two of us would've been the best of friends in a different life."
"Perhaps. But not in this life." Shishakli turned around and looked at her. Her hand came to rest on her crysknife. The unspoken announcement of violence hung in the air.
"Usul told you to set me free," said Chani carefully, a shiver passing down her spine.
"You have no right to call him that," Shishakli snapped, venomous. "You're not of his sietch. You never fought by his side. He never saved your life in battle, nor did you endanger your life for him. You never heard him cry out in his nightmares, night after night."
Chani stood speechless for a moment. "You love him," she said at length, unable to conceal her shock.
Though perhaps in retrospect, it isn't the least bit surprising, she thought with growing revulsion. Falling in love with a handsome, powerful young lord who's come to deliver salvation to the poor helpless Fremen... It's sickeningly predictable.
Shishakli flushed. Whether from embarrassment or anger, Chani couldn't tell. "It doesn't matter," she said quietly, unsheathing her crysknife.
"Muad'Dib told you not to hurt me," said Chani.
"Muad'Dib is too merciful. He doesn't understand all the ways of the desert: the necessity of making a clean cut, of leaving no loose ends behind." Shishakli slowly advanced towards her. "It's obvious you'll be back to make more trouble, to hurt him with any possible method. You make up such vile lies just to cause him pain..."
Chani stepped back, glancing at the sand dunes surrounding them.
"Don't try to run," said Shishakli drily. "You won't get far."
They both stood rooted in place, surrounded by the desert's eerie silence.
"Well?" demanded Shishakli at length. "Where's your crysknife?"
"I don't have one," Chani reminded her.
Shishakli uttered a curse under her breath. For a moment she seemed to contemplate her options. Fedaykin weren't above fighting dirty in battle, but cutting down an unarmed Fremen opponent would probably strike them as distasteful.
"All right." Shishakli's countenance turned grim with determination. She cut her own forearm with the crysknife, then sheathed the blade and pressed down on the trickle of blood. "Shai-Hulud will eat well today."
She came behind Chani, binding her wrists and ankles once more. Chani didn't struggle, sensing that Shishakli would simply seize the opportunity to stab her. For some foolish reason, she didn't want her own blood staining the young woman's knife.
Shishakli, you don't have to do this, she wanted to say. You don't want to do this. I can feel it by the way your fingers tremble while you tighten my bonds. However, she knew such words would be futile. The Fedaykin's pride and fierce protectiveness of her tribe wouldn't allow her to reconsider her actions.
"What will you tell Muad'Dib?" she asked, watching as Shishakli pulled out a thumper.
"That I've sent you to the desert."
Shishakli carefully planted the thumper in the sand, not far from Chani, on the slope of a dune above her, a place where it would be impossible for Chani to crawl or roll over and disable it, bound as she was. The thumper began to pound in a steady rhythm.
"Farewell, servant of the Bene Gesserit," said Shishakli, voice utterly monotonous as she turned swiftly away.
"Shishakli!" Chani called after her.
The young woman glanced over her shoulder.
"Don't stay up north after the eclipse. You might die."
Shishakli gave a mirthless smile. "I'm Fedaykin. I go where my leaders order me. If I die, I die."
With those words, she was gone.
Chani leaned back against the warm sand, staring at the sky. She closed her eyes, the thumper's steady beats filling her entire world. She imagined the immense, gaping maw opening beneath her, consuming all the sand around her. She would fall into that devouring darkness, and then all would be gone.
And so it ends, Great One. Unless you have some way of keeping me alive in the belly of the beast.
That thought made her laugh aloud.
There was a sudden, sharp sound, and the thumper's pounding ceased.
A thumper malfunction? That's less than a one in a thousand chance.
Chani opened her eyes and raised her head. The thumper lay in smoking ruins, clearly not subject to ordinary malfunction. It looked like it had been shot. A figure came over the opposite dune, sandwalking with nimble efficiency. As the figure drew closer, he removed his stillsuit mask, perhaps to reassure her, revealing a weathered, bearded face.
"Sihaya, are you unharmed?"
Chani looked up at him, blinking. She didn't recognize him. "Yes."
He knelt by her and cut her bonds, then helped her stand.
"Did Muad'Dib send you?" she asked.
He looked at her strangely. "No, no... I followed Shishakli. I was worried about her, the foolish young woman. Of course she didn't understand why you must be kept alive."
"I must be kept alive?" Chani echoed in wonder.
"You're Sihaya," he said. Faced with her blank expression, he added impatiently, "He shall come back from the dead with desert spring tears! Is it not written so?"
I wouldn't know. I've never studied the foreign superstitions, Chani thought. But it seemed like an ungrateful thing to say to a man who'd just saved her life.
"To whom do I owe a debt?" she asked instead.
"Stilgar."
Stilgar, the renowned naib of Sietch Tabr. If only I could get such a man on my side.
"Don't stay in the north after the upcoming eclipse," she told him. "All those who shall will face grave danger."
"Where the Mahdi goes, I go," he replied simply.
The Mahdi. Uliet's image came up in her mind's eye, and she wondered how he was faring in the south.
Stilgar will believe in his Mahdi until he fails, she thought. Only then will he consider alternatives.
Aloud she only said, "We'll await your arrival in the south, then."