Children of Dune
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Leto stood, stretched.
"The Golden Path, then," Ghanima said, and she spoke as much to herself as to him, knowing how their father's last vision met and melted into Leto's dreams.
Something brushed against the moisture seals behind them and voices could be heard murmuring there.
Leto reverted to the ancient language they used for privacy: "L'ii ani howr samis sm'kwi owr samit sut."
That was where the decision lodged itself in their awareness. Literally: We will accompany each other into deathliness, though only one may return to report it.
Ghanima stood then and, together, they returned through the moisture seals to the sietch, where the guards roused themselves and fell in behind as the twins headed toward their own quarters. The throngs parted before them with a difference on this morning, exchanging glances with the guards. Spending the night alone above the desert was an old Fremen custom for the holy sages. All the Uma had practiced this form of vigil. Paul Muad'Dib had done it... and Alia. Now the royal twins had begun.
Leto noted the difference, mentioned it to Ghanima.
"They don't know what we've decided for them," she said. "They don't really know."
Still in the private language, he said: "It requires the most fortuitous beginning."
Ghanima hesitated a moment to form her thoughts. Then: "In that time, mourning for the sibling, it must be exactly real - even to the making of the tomb. The heart must follow the sleep lest there be no awakening."
In the ancient tongue it was an extremely convoluted statement, employing a pronominal object separated from the infinitive. It was a syntax which allowed each set of internal phrases to turn upon itself, becoming several different meanings, all definite and quite distinct but subtly interrelated. In part, what she had said was that they risked death with Leto's plan and, real or simulated, it made no difference. The resultant change would be like death, literally: "funeral murder." And there was an added meaning to the whole which pointed accusatively at whoever survived to report, that is: act out the living part. Any misstep there would negate the entire plan, and Leto's Golden Path would become a dead end.
"Extremely delicate," Leto agreed. He parted the hangings for them as they entered their own anteroom.
Activity among their attendants paused only for a heartbeat as the twins crossed to the arched passage which led into the quarters assigned to the Lady Jessica.
"You are not Osiris." Ghanima reminded him.
"Nor will I try to be."
Ghanima took his arm to stop him. "Alia darsatay haunus m'smow," she warned.
Leto stared into his sister's eyes. Indeed, Alia's actions did give off a foul smell which their grandmother must have noted. He smiled appreciatively at Ghanima. She had mixed the ancient tongue with Fremen superstition to call up a most basic tribal omen. M'smow, the foul odor of a summer night, was the harbinger of death at the hands of demons. And Isis had been the demon-goddess of death to the people whose tongue they now spoke.
"We Atreides have a reputation for audacity to maintain," he said.
"So we'll take what we need," she said.
"It's that or become petitioners before our own Regency," he said. "Alia would enjoy that."
"But our plan..." She let it trail off.
Our plan, he thought. She shared it completely now. He said: "I think of our plan as the toil of the shaduf."
Ghanima glanced back at the anteroom through which they'd passed, smelling the furry odors of morning with their sense of eternal beginning. She liked the way Leto had employed their private language. Toil of the shaduf. It was a pledge. He'd called their plan agricultural work of a very menial kind: fertilizing, irrigating, weeding, transplanting, pruning - yet with the Fremen implication that this labor occurred simultaneously in Another World where it symbolized cultivating the richness of the soul.
Ghanima studied her brother as they hesitated here in the rock passage. It had grown increasingly obvious to her that he was pleading on two levels: one, for the Golden Path of his vision and their father's, and two, that she allow him free reign to carry out the extremely dangerous myth-creation which the plan generated. This frightened her. Was there more to his private vision that he had not shared? Could he see himself as the potentially deified figure to lead humankind into a rebirth - like father, like son? The cult of Muad'Dib had turned sour, fermenting in Alia's mismanagement and the unbridled license of a military priesthood which rode the Fremen power. Leto wanted regeneration.
He's hiding something from me, she realized.
She reviewed what he had told her of his dream. It held such iridescent reality that he might walk around for hours afterward in a daze. The dream never varied, he said.
"I am on sand in bright yellow daylight, yet there is no sun. Then I realize that I am the sun. My light shines out as a Golden Path. When I realize this, I move out of myself. I turn, expecting to see myself as the sun. But I am not the sun; I am a stick figure, a child's drawing with zigzag lightning lines for eyes, stick legs and stick arms. There is a scepter in my left hand, and it's a real scepter - much more detailed in its reality than the stick figure which holds it. The scepter moves, and this terrifies me. As it moves, I feel myself awaken, yet I know I'm still dreaming. I realize then that my skin is encased in something - an armor which moves as my skin moves. I cannot see this armor, but I feel it. My terror leaves me then, for this armor gives me the strength of ten thousand men."
As Ghanima stared at him, Leto tried to pull away, to continue their course toward Jessica's quarters. Ghanima resisted.
"This Golden Path could be no better than any other path," she said.
Leto looked at the rock floor between them, feeling the strong return of Ghanima's doubts. "I must do it," he said.
"Alia is possessed," she said. "That could happen to us. It could already have happened and we might not know it."
"No." He shook his head, met her gaze. "Alia resisted. That gave the powers within her their strength. By her own strength she was overcome. We've dared to search within, to seek out the old languages and the old knowledge. We're already amalgams of those lives within us. We don't resist; we ride with them. This was what I learned from our father last night. It's what I had to learn."
"He said nothing of that within me."
"You listened to our mother. It's what we -"
"And I almost lost."
"Is she still strong within you?" Fear tightened his face.
"Yes... but now I think she guards me with her love. You were very good when you argued with her." And Ghanima thought about the reflected mother-within, said: "Our mother exists now for me in the alam al-mythal with the others, but she has tasted the fruit of hell. Now I can listen to her without fear. As to the others..."
"Yes," he said. "And I listened to my father, but I think I'm really following the counsel of the grandfather for whom I was named. Perhaps the name makes it easy."
"Are you counseled to speak to our grandmother of the Golden Path?"
Leto waited while an attendant pressed past them with a basket-tray carrying the Lady Jessica's breakfast. A strong smell of spice filled the air as the attendant passed.
"She lives in us and in her own flesh," Leto said. "Her counsel can be consulted twice."