The Winds of Dune Read Free

huddled, out of reach but unable to escape.
    Gurney withdrew his hunting pistol and killed the hare instantly and painlessly with one shot to the head. He reached in and pulled out the warm, twitching carcass. The perfectly behaved gaze hounds observed him, their topaz eyes gleaming with alert fascination. Gurney tossed the animal to the ground and, when he gave a signal, the dogs fell upon the fresh kill, snapping at the flesh as if they had not eaten in days. A quick, predatory violence.
    A flash of one of the bloody battlefields of the Jihad crossed Gurney’s memory vision, and he blinked it away, relegating those sights to the past, where they belonged.
    But there were other memories he could not suppress, the things he would miss about Paul, and he felt his warrior self breaking down, crumbling. Paul, who had been such a huge, irreplaceable part of hislife, had faded into the expanse of desert, like a Fremen raider evading Harkonnens. This time, Paul would not be coming back.
    As he watched the gaze hounds tear the meat apart, Gurney felt as if parts of himself had been torn away, leaving raw and gaping wounds.
     

     
    That night, when Castle Caladan lay dark and quiet, the servants retired, leaving Jessica to mourn in private. But she could not sleep, could not find peace in an empty bedchamber that echoed with cold silence.
    She felt off balance, adrift. Due to her Bene Gesserit training, the valves of her emotions had been rusted shut with disuse, especially after Leto’s death, after she had turned her back on Arrakis and returned here.
    But Paul was her son!
    With a silent tread, Jessica glided down the castle’s corridors to the doorway of Gurney’s private chambers. She paused, wanting someone to talk to. She and Gurney could relate their common loss and consider what to do now, how to help Alia hold the already strained empire together until Paul’s children came of age. What sort of future could they create for those infant twins? The winds of Dune—the politics and desert storms—could strip a person’s flesh down to the bone.
    Before she knocked at the heavy door, Jessica was surprised to hear strange sounds coming from within—wordless animal noises. She realized with a start that Gurney was sobbing. Alone and in private, the stoic troubadour warrior unleashed his sorrow with an unsettling abandon.
    Jessica was even more disturbed to realize that her own grief was not nearly so deep or uncontrolled: It was somewhere far away, out of her reach. The lump inside her was hard and heavy. And numb. She didn’t know how to access the emotions beneath. The very idea upset her.
Why can’t I feel it the way he does?
    Hearing Gurney’s private sorrow, Jessica wanted to go in and offer comfort, but she knew that would shame him. The troubadour warrior would never want her to see his naked sentiments. He would consider it a weakness. So she withdrew, leaving him to his own grief.
    Unsteady on her feet, Jessica searched within herself, but encountered only hardened barriers that surrounded her sadness and prevented a real emotional release.
Paul was my son!
    As she returned to her chambers in the dead of night, Jessica quietly cursed the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. Damn them! They had stripped away a mother’s ability to feel the proper anguish at losing her child.

 

     
     
The beginning of a reign, or a regency, is a fragile time. Alliances shift, and people circle like carrion birds, hunting for the new leader’s weaknesses. Sycophants tell leaders what they wish to hear, not what they
need
to hear. The beginning is a time for clarity and hard decisions, because those decisions set the tone for the entire reign.
— ST. ALIA OF THE KNIFE

     
     
     
     
    T he envoy from Shaddam IV arrived less than a month after Paul vanished into the desert. Alia was astonished at how swiftly the exiled Corrino Emperor acted.
    Because the representative was so rushed, however, he had only a sketchy knowledge of the