[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The hungry creatures swarmed to the putrid feast, while the farmer crossed his arms over his scrawny chest.“Honored Matres send the body parts of high-caste men for my sligs to eat.They think the flesh of my superiors makes the slig meat taste sweeter.” The barest hint of a disrespectful sneer was quickly hidden by the man’s generally blank expression.“Perhaps I will see you again.”What did he mean? That Uxtal would be dumped here, too, when the whores were finished with him? Or was it just innocuous conversation? Uxtal frowned, unable to take his eyes from the sligs crawling over the body parts, chewing them efficiently with their multiple mouths.Finally, his two Honored Matre escorts came to fetch him.“You may enter your laboratory now.We have destroyed the door.”There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.—from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” by thePRINCESS IRULANRinya’s been gone for a month now.I miss her terribly.” Walking beside Janess toward the acolytes’ bungalows, Murbella could see her struggling to mask the anguish on her face.Despite the feelings in her own heart, the Mother Commander maintained a distant expression.“Do not make me lose another daughter, or another potential Reverend Mother.When the time comes, you must be certain you are prepared for the Agony.Do not let your pride rush you.”Janess nodded stoically.She would not speak ill of her lost twin, but she and Murbella both knew that Rinya had not been as confident as she had claimed.Instead, she had covered her doubts with a veneer of false bravado.And that had killed her.A Bene Gesserit had to hide her emotions, to drive away any vestiges of distracting love.Once, Murbella herself had been trapped by love, tangled and weakened by her bond with Duncan Idaho.Losing him had not freed her, and the thought of him still out there in the void, unimaginably far away, gave her a constant ache.Despite their stated position, the Sisterhood had long known that love could not be eliminated completely.Like ancient priests and nuns from some long-obsolete religion, Bene Gesserits were supposed to give up love entirely for a greater cause.But in the long run, it never worked to discard everything in order to protect against one perceived weakness.One could not save humans by forcing them to surrender their humanity.By remaining in close contact with the twins and observing their training, even revealing the identities of their parents, Murbella had broken the Sisterhood’s tradition.Most daughters taken into Bene Gesserit schools were told to reach their potential “without the distractions of family ties.” The Mother Commander did keep herself separate and aloof from the two younger daughters, Tanidia and Gianne, however.But she had lost Rinya and refused to cut herself off from Janess.Now, following a training session in combined Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre fighting skills, the two of them made their way across the Keep’s west garden, heading toward where Janess and her fellow acolytes lived.The girl still wore her rumpled and sweat-stained white combat suit.The Mother Commander kept her voice neutral, though she, too, felt the pang in her heart.“We must go on with our lives.We still have many enemies to face.Rinya would want us to.”Janess straightened as she walked.“Yes, she would.She believed you about the Enemy, and so do I.”Some Sisters doubted the Mother Commander’s urgency.Honored Matres had come running back into the Old Empire, sure that the sky was falling.But before Murbella stripped away all the foundations of the Bene Gesserit, a few of the women had demanded proof that such a terrible opponent truly existed out there.No Honored Matre had ever gone deep enough into Other Memory to remember much of her past; even Murbella could not recall their origin out in the Scattering, and could not say how they had first encountered their Enemy or what had provoked them to genocidal fury.Murbella couldn’t believe such blindness.Had the Honored Matres just imagined hundreds of planets eradicated by plague? Had they simply wished into existence the great Weapons used to obliterate Rakis and so many other planets?“We need no further evidence to know the Enemy is out there,” Murbella said curtly to her daughter, as they followed a dry, thorny hedge.“And they are now coming after us.All of us.I doubt the Enemy will make any distinctions among the factions of our New Sisterhood.Chapterhouse itself is certainly within their targeting crosshairs.”“If they find us,” Janess said.“Oh, they will find us.And they will destroy us, if we are not prepared.” She looked at the young woman, seeing so much potential in her daughter’s face.“Which is why we need as many Reverend Mothers as possible.”Janess had thrown herself into her studies with a determination that would have surprised even her obsessive, driven twin.Fighting with her hands and feet, spinning, rolling, dodging, the girl could strike an adversary from all sides, encircling her with speed and power.Earlier that day Janess had faced off against a tall, wiry girl named Caree Debrak.Caree had come in as a young student from the newly conquered Honored Matres swarming toward Chapterhouse.Harboring resentment against the Mother Commander’s daughter, Caree had used the competitive event as an excuse to vent her anger.She intended to hurt.Janess had practiced the lesson’s moves and expected to beat the girl in fair combat, but the youthful Honored Matre had unleashed a raw form of violence, breaking the rules and nearly breaking Janess’s bones.The female bashar in charge of personal combat training, Wikki Aztin, had dragged the pair apart.The incident troubled Murbella greatly.“You lost to Caree because the Honored Matres have no inhibitions.You must learn to match them in that, if you mean to succeed here.”In the past several months, Murbella had detected an ugly undertone, especially among the younger trainees
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]