Dromind had braced the High Priest immediately after breakfast. The remains of Tuek’s meal still occupied the serving table on the balcony. Through the open window, they could hear stirrings overhead in Sheeana’s quarters.
Tuek put a cautioning finger to his lips and spoke in a hushed voice. “The Holy Child goes of her own choice to the desert.” He went to a wall map and pointed to an area southwest of Keen. “Apparently this is an area that interests her or . . . I should say, calls her.”
“I am told she makes frequent use of dictionaries,” Dromind said. “Surely, that cannot be a –”
“She is testing us,” Tuek said. “Do not be fooled.”
“But Lord Tuek, she asks the most childish questions of Cania and Alhosa.”
“Do you question my judgment, Dromind?”
Belatedly, Dromind realized he had overstepped the proper bounds. He fell silent but his expression said many more words were compressed within him.
“God has sent her to weed out some evil that has crept into the ranks of the anointed,” Tuek said. “Go! Pray and ask your self if that evil has lodged itself within you.”
When Dromind had gone, Tuek summoned a trusted aide. “Where is the Holy Child?”
“She has gone out into the desert, Lord, to commune with her Father.”
“To the southwest?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Dromind must be taken far out to the east and left on the sand. Plant several thumpers to make sure he never returns.”
“Dromind, Lord?”
“Dromind.”
Even after Dromind was translated into the Mouth of God, the priests continued to follow his original injunction. They studied Sheeana.
Sheeana also studied.
Gradually, so gradually that she could not identify the point of transition, she recognized her great power over those around her. At first, it was a game, a continual Children’s Day with adults jumping to obey each childish whim. But it appeared that no whim was too difficult.
Did she require a rare fruit for her table?
The fruit was served to her on a golden dish.
Did she glimpse a child far below on the teeming streets and require that child as a playmate?
That child was hustled up to Sheeana’s temple quarters. When fear and shock passed, the child might even join in some game, which the priests and priestesses observed intently. Innocent skipping about on the rooftop garden, giggling whispers — all were subjected to intense analysis. Sheeana found the awe of such children a burden. She seldom called the same child back to her, preferring to learn new things from new playmates.
The priests achieved no consensus about the innocence of such encounters. The playmates were put through fearful interrogation until Sheeana discovered this and raged at her guardians.
Inevitably, word of Sheeana spread throughout Rakis and off-planet. The Sisterhood’s reports accumulated. The years passed in a kind of sublimely autocratic routine — feeding Sheeana’s curiosity. It was a curiosity that appeared to have no limits. None of those among the immediate attendants thought of this as education: Sheeana teaching the priests of Rakis and they teaching her. The Bene Gesserit, however, observed this aspect of Sheeana’s life at once and watched it closely.
“She is in good hands. Leave her there until she is ready for us,” Taraza ordered. “Keep a defense force on constant alert and see that I get regular reports.”
Not once did Sheeana reveal her true origins nor what Shaitan had done to her family and neighbors. That was a private thing between Shaitan and herself. She thought of her silence as payment for having been spared.
Some things paled for Sheeana. She made fewer trips into the desert. Curiosity continued but it became obvious that an explanation of Shaitan’s behavior toward her might not be found on the open sand. And although she knew there were embassies of other powers on Rakis, the Bene Gesserit spies among her attendants made sure that Sheeana did not express too much interest in the Sisterhood. Soothing answers to dampen such interest were provided and metered out to Sheeana as required.
The message from Taraza to her observers on Rakis was direct and pointed: “The generations of preparation have become the years of refinement. We will move only at the proper moment. There is no longer any doubt that this child is the one.”