Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

Odrade bent and whispered in Sheeana’s ear. “Watch Waff carefully. If he moves after us, call out.”

“Yes, Mother. Where are we going?”

“I must look at this place. I am the one who has been brought here for a purpose.” She raised her voice and addressed Waff: “Waff, please wait there for the rope.”

“What have you been whispering?” he demanded. “Why must I wait? What are you doing?”

“I have been praying,” Odrade said. “Now, I must continue this pilgrimage alone.”

“Why alone?”

In the old language of the Islamiyat, she said: “It is written.”

That stopped him!

Odrade led the way at a fast walk toward the rock stairs.

Sheeana, hurrying along beside Odrade, said: “We must tell people about this place. The old Fremen caves are safe from Shaitan.”

“Be still, child,” Odrade said. She aimed the light up into the stairway. It curved through the rock, angling sharply to the right up there. Odrade hesitated. The warning sense of danger she had felt at the beginning of this venture came back intensified. It was an almost palpable thing within her.

What is up there?

“Wait here, Sheeana,” Odrade said. “Don’t let Waff follow me.”

“How can I stop him?” Sheeana glanced fearfully back across the chamber where Waff stood.

“Tell him it is God’s will that he remain. Say it this way . . .

Odrade bent close to Sheeana and repeated the words in Waff’s ancient language, then: “Say nothing else. Stand in his way and repeat it if he tries to pass.”

Sheeana mouthed the new words quietly. She had them, Odrade saw. The girl was quick.

“He’s afraid of you,” Odrade said. “He won’t try to harm you.”

“Yes, Mother.” Sheeana turned, folded her arms across her breast and looked across the chamber at Waff.

Aiming the light ahead of her, Odrade went up the rock stairs. Sietch Tabr! What surprise have you left for us here, old worm?

In a long low hallway at the top of the stairs, Odrade came on the first desert-mummified bodies. There were five of them, two men and three women, no identifying marks or clothing on them. They had been completely stripped and left for the desert’s dryness to preserve. Dehydration had pulled skin and flesh tightly around the bones. The bodies were propped in a row, their feet extended across the passage. Odrade was forced to step over each of these macabre obstructions.

She passed her handlight across each body as she went. They had been stabbed almost identically. A slashing blade had been thrust upward just below the arch of the sternum.

Ritual killings?

Dryly puckered flesh had been withdrawn from the wounds, leaving a dark spot to mark them. These bodies were not from Fremen times, Odrade knew. Fremen death stills made ashes of all flesh to recover a body’s water.

Odrade probed ahead with her light and paused to consider her position. Discovery of the bodies intensified her sense of peril. I should have brought a weapon. But that would have aroused Waff’s suspicions.

The persistence of that inner warning could not be evaded. This relic of Sietch Tabr was perilous.

The beam of her light revealed another stairway at the end of this hall. Cautiously, Odrade moved forward. At the first step, she sent the beam of her light probing upward. Shallow steps. Only a little way up, more rock — a wider space up there. Odrade turned and sent the light stabbing around this hallway. Chips and burn marks scarred the rock walls. Once more, she looked up the stairway.

What is up there?

The sense of danger was intense.

One slow step at a time, pausing often, Odrade climbed. She emerged into a larger passage hewn through the native rock. More bodies greeted her. These had been abandoned in the disarray of their final moments. Again, she saw only mummified flesh stripped of clothing. They lay scattered along this wider passage — twenty of them. She wove her way around them. Some had been stabbed in the same way as the five on the lower level. Some had been slashed and hacked and burned by lasgun beams. One had been beheaded and the skin-masked skull lay against a wall of the passage like a ball abandoned from some terrible game.

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