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Stilgar came from shadows to her right, crossed to the group beneath the glowglobes. She marked how he fingered his beard and the watchful, cat-stalking look of him.
Abrupt fear shot through Jessica as her senses awakened to the tensions visible in the people gathered around Paul--the stiff movements, the ritual positions.
"They have my countenance!" Stilgar rumbled.
Jessica recognized the man Stilgar confronted--Jamis! She saw then the rage in Jamis--the tight set of his shoulders.
Jamis, the man Paul bested! she thought.
"You know the rule, Stilgar," Jamis said.
"Who knows it better?" Stilgar asked, and she heard the tone of placation in his voice, the attempt to smooth something over.
"I choose the combat," Jamis growled.
Jessica sped across the cave, grasped Stilgar's arm. "What is this?" she asked.
"It is the amtal rule," Stilgar said. "Jamis is demanding the right to test your part in the legend."
"She must be championed," Jamis said. "If her champion wins, that's the truth in it. But it's said...." He glanced across the press of people. "... that she'd need no champion from the Fremen--which can mean only that she brings her own champion."
He's talking of single combat with Paul! Jessica thought.
She released Stilgar's arm, took a half-step forward. "I'm always my own champion," she said. "The meaning's simple enough for...."
"You'll not tell us our ways!" Jamis snapped. "Not without more proof than I've seen. Stilgar could've told you what to say last morning. He could've filled your mind full of the coddle and you could've bird-talked it to us, hoping to make a false way among us."
I can take him, Jessica thought, but that might conflict with the way they interpret the legend. And again she wondered at the way the Missionaria Protectiva's work had been twisted on this planet.
Stilgar looked at Jessica, spoke in a low voice but one designed to carry to the crowd's fringe. "Jamis is one to hold a grudge, Sayyadina. Your son bested him and--"
"It was an accident!" Jamis roared. "There was witch-force at Tuono Basin and I'll prove it now!"
"... and I've bested him myself," Stilgar continued. "He seeks by this tahaddi challenge to get back at me as well. There's too much of violence in Jamis for him ever to make a good leader--too much ghafla, the distraction. He gives his mouth to the rules and his heart to the sarfa, the turning away. No, he could never make a good leader. I've preserved him this long because he's useful in a fight as such, but when he gets this carving anger on him he's dangerous to his own society."
"Stilgar-r-r-r!" Jamis rumbled.
And Jessica saw what Stilgar was doing, trying to enrage Jamis, to take the challenge away from Paul.
Stilgar faced Jamis, and again Jessica heard the soothing in the rumbling voice. "Jamis, he's but a boy. He's--"
"You named him a man," Jamis said. "His mother says he's been through the gom jabbar. He's full-fleshed and with a surfeit of water. The ones who carried their pack say there's literjons of water in it. Literjons! And us sipping our catchpockets the instant they show dew-sparkle."
Stilgar glanced at Jessica. "Is this true? Is there water in your pack?"
"Yes."
"Literjons of it?"
"Two literjons."
"What was intended with this wealth?"
Wealth? she thought. She shook her head, feeling the coldness in his voice.
"Where I was born, water fell from the sky and ran over the land in wide rivers," she said. "There were oceans of it so broad you could not see the other shore. I've not been trained to your water discipline. I never before had to think of it this way."
A sighing gasp arose from the people around them: "Water fell from the sky ... it ran over the land."
"Did you know there're those among us who've lost from their catchpockets by accident and will be in sore trouble before we reach Tabr this night?"
"How could I know?" Jessica shook her head. "If they're in need, give them water from our pack."
"Is that what you intended with this wealth?"
"I intended it to save life," she said.
"Then we accept your blessing, Sayyadina."
"You'll not buy us off with water," Jamis growled. "Nor will you anger me against yourself, Stilgar. I see you trying to make me call you out before I've proved my words."
Stilgar faced Jamis. "Are you determined to press this fight against a child, Jamis?" His voice was low, venomous.
"She must be championed."
"Even though she has my countenance?"
"I invoke the amtal rule," Jamis said. "It's my right."
Stilgar nodded. "Then, if the boy does not carve you down, you'll answer to my knife afterward. And this time I'll not hold back the blade as I've done before."
"You cannot do this thing," Jessica said. "Paul's just--"
"You must not interfere, Sayyadina," Stilgar said. "Oh, I know you can take me and, therefore, can take anyone among us, but you cannot best us all united. This must be; it is the amtal rule."
Jessica fell silent, staring at him in the green light of the glowglobes, seeing the demoniacal stiffness that had taken over his expression. She shifted her attention to Jamis, saw the brooding look to his brows and thought: I should've seen that before. He broods. He's the silent kind, one who works himself up inside. I should've been prepared.
"If you harm my son," she said, "You'll have me to meet. I call you out now. I'll carve you into a joint of--"
"Mother." Paul stepped forward, touched her sleeve. "Perhaps if I explain to Jamis how--"
"Explain!" Jamis sneered.
Paul fell silent, staring at the man. He felt no fear of him. Jamis appeared clumsy in his movements and he had fallen so easily in their night encounter on the sand. But Paul still felt the nexus-boiling of this cave, still re
membered the prescient visions of himself dead under a knife. There had been so few avenues of escape for him in that vision....
Stilgar said: "Sayyadina, you must step back now where--"
"Stop calling her Sayyadina!" Jamis said. "That's yet to be proved. So she knows the prayer! What's that? Every child among us knows it."
He has talked enough, Jessica thought. I've the key to him. I could immobilize him with a word. She hesitated. But I cannot stop them all.
"You will answer to me then," Jessica said, and she pitched her voice in a twisting tone with a little whine in it and a catch at the end.
Jamis stared at her, fright visible on his face.
"I'll teach you agony," she said in the same tone. "Remember that as you fight. You'll have agony such as will make the gom jabbar a happy memory by comparison. You will writhe with your entire--"
"She tries a spell on me!" Jamis gasped. He put his clenched right fist beside his ear. "I invoke the silence on her!"
"So be it then," Stilgar said. He cast a warning glance at Jessica. "If you speak again, Sayyadina, we'll know it's your witchcraft and you'll be forfeit." He nodded for her to step back.
Jessica felt hands pulling her, helping her back, and she sensed they were not unkindly. She saw Paul being separated from the throng, the elfin-faced Chani whispering in his ear as she nodded toward Jamis.
A ring formed within the troop. More glowglobes were brought and all of them tuned to the yellow band.
Jamis stepped into the ring, slipped out of his robe and tossed it to someone in the crowd. He stood there in a cloudy gray slickness of stillsuit that was patched and marked by tucks and gathers. For a moment, he bent with his mouth to his shoulder, drinking from a catchpocket tube. Presently he straightened, peeled off and detached the suit, handed it carefully into the crowd. He stood waiting, clad in loin-cloth and some tight fabric over his feet, a crysknife in his right hand.
Jessica saw the girl-child Chani helping Paul, saw her press a crysknife handle into his palm, saw him heft it, testing the weight and balance. And it came to Jessica that Paul had been trained in prana and bindu, the nerve and the fiber--that he had been taught fighting in a deadly school, his teachers men like Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck, men who were legends in their own lifetimes. The boy knew the devious ways of the Bene Gesserit and he looked supple and confident.
