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Odrade freed her hand from Sheeana's. "Stay right here, please. Waff?"
"I hear the 'thopters," he said.
"We all hear them," Odrade said. "They are landing. We will have help presently. Meanwhile, please stay where you are and remain silent. I need the silence."
Whistling and listening for the echoes, placing each foot carefully, Odrade worked her way deeper into the darkness. An outstretched hand encountered a rough rock surface. She felt along it. Only about waist high. She could feel nothing beyond it. The echoes of her whistles said it was a smaller space there and partly enclosed.
A voice called from high behind her. "Reverend Mother! Are you there?"
Odrade turned, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: "Stay back! We've been spilled into a deep cave. Bring a light and a long rope."
A tiny dark figure moved back out of the distant opening. The light up there was growing dimmer. She lowered her cupped hands and spoke into the darkness.
"Sheeana? Waff? Come toward me about ten paces and wait there."
"Where are we, Mother?" Sheeana asked.
"Patience, child."
A low, muttering sound came from Waff. Odrade recognized the ancient words of the Islamiyat. He was praying. Waff had dropped all attempts to conceal his origins from her. Good. The believer was a receptacle for her to feed with the sweets of the Missionaria Protectiva.
Meanwhile, the possibilities of this place where the worm had brought them excited Odrade. Guided by one hand on the rock barrier, she explored along it to her left. The top was quite smooth in places. All of it sloped inward away from her. Other Memories offered a sudden projection:
Catchbasin!
This was a Fremen water storage basin. Odrade inhaled deeply, testing for moisture. The air was flint dry.
A bright light from the fissure stabbed downward, driving away the darkness. A voice called from the opening and Odrade recognized it as one of her Sisters.
"We can see you!"
Odrade stepped back from the low barrier and turned, peering all around. Waff and Sheeana stood about sixty meters away staring at their surroundings. The chamber was roughly circular, some two hundred meters in diameter. A rock dome arched high overhead. She examined the low barrier beside her: yes, a Fremen catchbasin. She could discern the small rock island in its center where a captive worm could be kept ready to spill into the water. Other Memories replayed that agonized, twisting death which produced the spice poison to ignite a Fremen orgy.
A low arch framed more darkness on the far side of the basin. She could see the spillway there where water had been brought down from a windtrap. There would be more catchbasins back there, an entire complex of them designed to hold a wealth of moisture for an ancient tribe. She knew the name of this place now.
"Sietch Tabr," Odrade whispered.
The words ignited a flood of useful memories. This had been Stilgar's place in the time of Muad'dib. Why did that worm bring us to Sietch Tabr?
A worm took Sheeana to the City of Keen. That others might know of her? Then what was there to know here? Were there people back there in that darkness? Odrade sensed no indications of life in that direction.
Her Sister at the opening interrupted these thoughts. "We've had to ask for the rope to be brought from Dar-es-Balat! The people at the museum say this is probably Sietch Tabr! They thought it had been destroyed!"
"Send down a light so I can explore it," Odrade called.
"The priests ask that we leave it undisturbed!"
"Send me a light!" Odrade insisted.
Presently, a dark object tumbled down the sandslope in a small spill of sand. Odrade sent Sheeana scampering for it. A touch on the switch and a bright beam went lancing at the dark archway beyond the catchbasin. Yes, more basins there. And beside this basin, a narrow stairway cut into the rock. The steps led upward, turning and removing themselves from her view.
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.
This new passage led straight ahead past openings into small chambers on both sides. She saw nothing of value in the small chambers where she sent her probing light: a few scattered strands of spice fiber, small spills of melted rock, melt bubbles occasionally on floors, walls, and ceilings.
What violence was this?
Suggestive stains could be seen on some of the chamber floors. Spilled blood? One chamber had a tiny mound of brown cloth in a comer. Scraps of torn fabric scattered under Odrade's foot.
There was dust. Dust everywhere. Her feet stirred it up in passing.
The passage ended at an archway that gave onto a deep ledge. She sent her light beyond the ledge: an enormous chamber, far larger than the one down below. Its curved ceiling went so high she knew it must extend into the rock base of the great wall. Wide, shallow steps led down from the ledge onto the chamber floor. Hesitantly, Odrade went down the steps and out onto the floor. She sent her light sweeping all around. Other passages led out of the great chamber. Some, she saw, had been blocked by stone and the stones torn away to be left scattered on the ledge and on this great floor.
