"It's just grief," she said, voice low. "Just grief. Do you know what I must do for him? I must save the life of the Princess Irulan. That one! You should hear her grief. Wailing, giving moisture to the dead; she swears she loved him and knew it not. She reviles her Sisterhood, says she'll spend her life teaching Paul's children."
"You trust her?"
"She reeks of trustworthiness!"
"Ahhh," Idaho murmured. The final pattern unreeled before his awareness like a design on fabric. The defection of the Princess Irulan was the last step. It left the Bene Gesserit with no remaining lever against the Atreides heirs.
Alia began to sob, leaned against him, face pressed into his chest. "Ohhh, Duncan, Duncan! He's gone!"
Idaho put his lips against her hair. "Please," he whispered. He felt her grief mingling with his like two streams entering the same pool.
"I need you, Duncan," she sobbed. "Love me!"
"I do," he whispered.
She lifted her head, peered at the moon-frosted outline of his face. "I know, Duncan. Love knows love."
Her words sent a shudder through him, a feeling of estrangement from his old self. He had come out here looking for one thing and had found another. It was as though he'd lurched into a room full of familiar people only to realize too late that he knew none of them.
She pushed away from him, took his hand. "Will you come with me, Duncan?"
"Wherever you lead," he said.
She led him back across the qanat into the darkness at the base of the massif and its Place of Safety.
EPILOGUE
No bitter stench of funeral-still for Muad'dib.
No knell nor solemn rite to free the mind
From avaricious shadows.
He is the fool saint,
The golden stranger living forever
On the edge of reason.
Let your guard fall and he is there!
His crimson peace and sovereign pallor
Strike into our universe on prophetic webs
To the verge of a quiet glance--there!
Out of bristling star-jungles:
Mysterious, lethal, an oracle without eyes,
Catspaw of prophecy, whose voice never dies!
Shai-hulud, he awaits thee upon a strand
Where couples walk and fix, eye to eye,
The delicious ennui of love.
He strides through the long cavern of time,
Scattering the fool-self of his dream.
--THE GHOLA'S HYMN
1 Frank Herbert was not entirely deaf to his readership. In Dune Messiah, he would resurrect
Duncan Idaho in an altered form--a "ghola" named Hayt, who was cloned from the cells
of the dead man, resulting in a creature who did not have the memories of the original.
Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
(Series: Dune # 2)
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