Chapter 62 Chapter 62

Pilgrims dance to the sound of drums and flutes in the temple square.There are no turbans on their heads, no collars around their necks, and their clothes are light and transparent.As they spun around, their long black hair sometimes flung straight out and sometimes fell over their faces. Alia looked down at the scene from the heights of the temple, and found it both fascinating and repulsive at the same time.It's halfway through the morning, and it won't be long before the aroma of spiced coffee will radiate from the shops under the awnings and permeate the entire square.Soon, she'll be out to meet Falakon, hand him official gifts, and oversee his first meeting with Ghanima.

Everything is going smoothly according to plan.Ghani would kill him, and then, in the chaos that followed, there was only one man ready to pick up the pieces.The puppet dances under the string control.As she wished, Stilgar killed Agarvas, and Agarvas handed the rebels into her hands without his knowledge, because the new boots she gave him were hidden With a secret signal transmitter.Now, Stilgar and Iruran are imprisoned in the temple's dungeon.Perhaps they should be killed immediately, but they may have other uses.Let them wait, they are no longer a threat anyway.She noticed that the Fremen of the city below were admiring the pilgrim dancers, their eyes full of longing.After leaving the desert, the concept of equality between the sexes still persists among the urban Fremen, but the differences in social status between men and women have emerged.This is also developing according to plan.Divide and weaken.From these Freemen who appreciate the extraterrestrial dance, Alia can feel this subtle change.

Let them see.Fill their minds with desire. Alia's upper window was open, and she could feel the temperature rising sharply outside.During this season, temperatures will rise as the sun rises and reach their highest point in the early afternoon. The temperature on the stone floor of the square is much higher than here, which makes the dancers feel very uncomfortable.But they're still twirling, ducking, throwing their arms out, and their hair is still flowing with their movement.They dedicated their dance to Alia, Mother of Heaven.An aide had told her about it, and clearly expressed disdain for the strange behavior of these Gentiles.The aide explained that the women were from Ekon, where banned science and technology are still preserved.

Alia also snorted contemptuously.These women are as ignorant, superstitious and backward as the Fremen of the desert... That disdainful assistant was right.But neither the assistant nor the Eckon knew that the word Eckon was just a number in a dead language. Alia smiled secretly, thinking: Let them dance.Dancing wastes energy that could otherwise be channeled into destructive behavior.Besides, the music is also very beautiful. Between the gourd drum and the clapping, there are waves of faint music floating around. Suddenly the music was drowned out by the din from the far end of the square.The dancers took the wrong step and returned to normal after a brief hesitation, but they could no longer be uniform, and even their attention wandered to the exit at the far end of the square.There was a mass of people rushing up the stony ground like water through an open aqueduct.

Alia stared at the oncoming current. She heard shouts, one word over the others: "Missionary! Missionary!" Then she saw him, striding in with the first wave, his hand on the young guide's shoulder. The pilgrim dancers stopped circling and retreated near the steps below Alia.Their audience huddled with them.Alia felt the awe of the people.She herself felt fear. How bold he is! She half turned around, wanting to summon the guards, but on second thought she gave up on the decision.Crowds filled the square.If they are prevented from listening to the prophecy of the blind man, they may become mad.

Alia clenched her fists. missionary!Why did Paul do this?Half of the people thought he was a "lunatic from the desert", so they were afraid of him; the other half secretly talked about him in the market or in the small shop, saying that he was Muad'di, otherwise how could the church allow him to spread such vicious things? Heresy? Alia saw refugees among the crowd, the remnants of the abandoned caverns, their robes in tatters.Down there is a dangerous place, a place where mistakes can be made. "lady?" The voice came from behind Alia.She turned and saw Zyarenka standing at the door leading to the outer room.Armed royal guards followed closely behind her.

"What is it, Zyarenka?" "Ma'am, Falcon is outside asking for a meeting." "Here? In my apartment?" "Yes, ma'am." "Is he alone?" "And two bodyguards and Mrs. Jessica." Alia put a hand to her throat, remembering her last confrontation with her mother.Times are different.The new environment determined the relationship between the two of them. "He's so impatient," said Alia. "Has he any reason?" "He heard about that..." Zyarenka pointed to the square under the window. Alia frowned. "Do you believe him, Zyarenka?"

"No, ma'am. I think he's heard some gossip. He wants to see your reaction." "My mother taught him to do it!" "Obviously, ma'am." "Zyarenka, my dear, I ask you to carry out a series of very important orders. Come here." Zyarenka came within a step of her. "lady?" "Let Farakon, his bodyguard, and my mother come in. Then prepare to bring Ghanima here. She's going to dress up like a Freeman bride—a bride exactly." "With a knife, ma'am?" "With a knife." "Ma'am, then—"

"Ghanima will not pose a threat to me." "Ma'am, but she ran away with Stilgar." "Zyarenka!" "lady?" "Go ahead and carry out my orders. Let Ghanima get ready. While this is being done, you send five men from the Church to the square. Let them call the missionaries to me. Let them wait for a chance to speak , do nothing else. They cannot use force. I ask them to convey a polite invitation. Absolutely no force. And, Zyarenka..." "Ma'am?" She sounded so unhappy. "The missionary and Ghanima must be brought to me at the same time. They should come in together when I sign. Do you understand?"

"I know about the plan, ma'am, but—" "Execute the order! Bring them in together." Then Alia raised her head and signaled the female guard to leave.Zyarenka turned and left.Alia said, "You let Farakon and his party come in on the way, but you must let ten of your most trusted people bring them in." Zyarenka glanced behind him, walked on and left the house. "At your command, ma'am." Alia turned and looked out the window.In a few more minutes, the whole scheme will bear bloody fruit.Paul will be on the spot watching his daughter deliver the fatal blow.

Arya heard Zyarenka's guards come in.It will be over soon.Everything will end. With an overwhelming sense of triumph, she looked down at the missionary standing on the first step, with the young guide at his side.Alia saw the temple priests in yellow robes waiting on the left, slowly retreating under the pressure of the crowd.They are however experienced with crowds and still find their way close to their goal.The preacher's voice echoed over the square as the crowd waited intently for his sermon.Let them listen!Soon, his words will be interpreted as something different from what he meant.And there will be no more preachers to correct. She heard Falcon and his party come in.Jessica's voice came over. "Alia?" Without turning around, Alia said directly, "Welcome, Prince Farrakon, and you, Mother. Come and enjoy a good show." She glanced behind her and saw the burly Satuk Kataikanik glaring at him. Guards blocking their way. "That's rude," Alia said. "Send them here." Two guards, apparently having received Zyarenka's prior orders, stepped forward and stood between her and the others.The other guards stepped aside. Alia stepped back to the right side of the window and gestured, "This is the best position." Jessica, dressed in traditional black robes and keeping her eyes on Alia, guarded Farrakhan as she walked to the window and stood between him and Alia's guards. "You are very kind, Mrs. Alia," said Falcon. "I have heard too many rumors about this missionary." "That's him down there," Alia said. Falakon wore the gray sadduka uniform without any embellishments.The graceful manner in which he moved caught Alia's attention.Perhaps this Prince Corino was more than just a loafing playboy. The preacher's voice, amplified by the monitors under the windows, filled the room. Alia felt her bones tremble, and she began to listen to him fascinated. "I found myself in the desert of Zan," cried the missionary, "in the ruins of a moaning wilderness. God commanded me to clean up that place. For we have angered the desert and saddened it. We have been harassed in the wilderness. Temptation, forsake our way." Praise the desert, Arya thought, where the first true Sunni wanderers were judged, and it was from these wanderers that the Fremen descended.What is he saying!Was he implying that he had a part to play in destroying the caverns dedicated to the Crown? "Beasts lie in your lands," said the preacher, his voice echoing in the square, "insidious creatures occupying your houses. You who have fled your homes cannot live in the desert any longer. Yes, you Those who give up the traditional way, if you persist in your obsession, you will eventually die in a nest of filth. But if you heed my warning, God will guide you through the abyss and into the mountains of God. Yes, Xia Hulu will guide you .” There was a murmur from the crowd.The missionary stopped, his empty eye sockets following the sound, sweeping from one end to the other.Then he threw up his hands, opened them wide, and cried, "Oh God, my flesh longs to return to the dry land!" An old woman stood before the missionary, a refugee, recognizable by her tattered robes.She raised her hands towards him and begged, "Help us, Muad'di, help us!" Aria's chest clenched in fear.She asked herself if the old woman knew the truth of the matter.She glanced at her mother, but Lady Jessica did not move, instead dividing her attention between Farrakon, Arya's guards, and the sight outside the window.Farrakon took root there and was firmly attracted. Alia looked out the window again, trying to find the priests of the temple.They were out of sight, and she suspected they had gone around under the temple gate, trying to find a way from there directly down the steps. The missionary pointed to the old woman's head with his right hand and shouted: "You yourself are the only help! You have a rebellious spirit, you bring dry winds, sand and dust, and heat waves. You bear our desert on your shoulders, bear A whirlwind from the desert, from that dreadful place. I come from the wilderness. Water falls on the desert from collapsed aqueducts. Rivers run across the land. Water falls from the sky on the equator of the dunes! Oh, God has commanded me, my friend, to build a straight highway for our Lord in the desert." He stretched out a stiff finger and pointed tremblingly at the steps beneath his feet. "It is not our loss that new towns are uninhabitable! We have eaten bread from heaven, but the noise of strangers has driven us from our homes! They have brought us barrenness, and made our land uninhabitable, Let there be no more life on our land." There was a commotion in the crowd, refugees and urban Fremen glaring at the alien pilgrims around them. He can spark a bloody riot!Well, Alia thought, let him go.My priest can take advantage of the chaos and approach him. She saw the five priests, tightly packed together in yellow robes, walking slowly down the steps behind the missionaries. "The water we sprinkled on the desert has turned to blood," said the missionary, waving his arms, "the blood that has flowed on our land! Behold, our desert brings joy and prosperity, and it attracts strangers, Hidden among us. They bring violence! Their forces are gathering, the last of the Klaritzk is coming! They gather the desert's possessions. They plunder the riches hidden in the depths of the desert. Behold, They are still continuing their evil work. The teaching says this: 'I stood on the desert and saw a beast leaping out of the sand, and on the head of that beast was engraved the name of God!'” An angry murmur erupted from the crowd.People raised their fists and waved. "What is he doing?" Falcon asked in a low voice. "I want to know, too," Alia said.She put one hand on her chest, feeling the tension and excitement at the moment.If he continued, the crowd would turn on the pilgrims! But the missionary half-turned, aimed his empty eye sockets at the temple, and stretched out his hand, pointing to the window of Alia's apartment high above. "Another blasphemy against God," he cried, "blasphemy! The blasphemer is Alia!" The entire square fell into a stunned silence. Aria's whole body froze.She knew the crowd couldn't see her, but she still felt so exposed and helpless.The echo in her head trying to comfort her competed with the sound of her heartbeat.She could only stare fixedly at the wonderful performance below.The missionary still maintained his gesture. However, what he said had already made the priests bear it no longer.They broke the silence, yelled angrily, and rushed down the steps, knocking everyone in their path to the side.They moved, and the crowd reacted, rushing up the steps like a wave, knocking the few bystanders standing in front of them.The wave caught the missionary and separated him from his young guide.Then, an arm with a yellow sleeve stretched out from the crowd, and the hand connected to that arm brandished a howling blade.She saw the knife go down, into the missionary's chest. The loud bang as the temple gates closed pulled Alia back from her shock.The guards apparently did this to prevent the crowd from storming the temple.But people had backed off, standing in a circle around a crouched object on the steps.An eerie silence hung over the square. Alia saw many corpses, but only that one lay there alone. The crowd cried out in pain: "Muad'di! They killed Muad'dhi!" "My God," Alia trembled, "My God." "It's late, isn't it?" Jessica said. Alia turned and noticed that Farrakon was taken aback—he saw the furious look on her face. "They killed Paul!" Alia screamed. "That's your son! When those people prove it, you know what's going to happen?" Jessica stood there quietly, motionless, for a long time.Alia told her what she already knew. Falcon reached out and patted her, breaking her silence. "Ma'am," he said. There was so much sympathy in his voice that Jessica wanted to die surrounded by it.She looked at the dark scowl on Alia's face, then at the sympathy Farrakon was showing, and she thought: Maybe I'm teaching too well. There was nothing suspicious about Alia's words.Jessica remembered every tone in the preacher's voice and heard her technique from it.She spent years developing that person.He was destined to be emperor, and now he lay on the bloody mat in front of the temple steps. Desire has blinded me, Jessica thought. Alia motioned to an assistant, "Bring Ghanima." Jessica forced herself to understand what those words meant.Ghanima?Why bring Ghanima now? The assistant turned and walked towards the door of the outer room.She wanted to order the latch to be opened, but before the words came out, the whole door bulged.The hinges were splintered and the latch snapped aside.The door, made of thick steel plates to withstand the terrible energy, slammed down inside the house. The guards scrambled to avoid the fallen gate, their weapons drawn. Jessica and Falcon's bodyguards surrounded Prince Corino tightly. But there were only two children standing under the doorframe: Ghanima on the left, in a black wedding robe; Alia stood by the fallen door, watching the two children, and began to tremble involuntarily. "The family is here to welcome us," Leto said. "Grandmother." He nodded to Jessica, then turned his attention to Prince Corino. "This must be Prince Farrakon. Welcome." Come to Arrakis, prince." Ghanima's eyes looked empty.Her right hand grabbed the ceremonial howling knife hanging at her waist, showing the intention of breaking free from Leto's grasp.Leto shook her arm, and her whole body shook with it. "Look at me, family," Leto said, "I am the Lion of House Aree Atreides. And this—" He shook his arm again, and her body shook a few more times. Exit, "This is Ah Ye, the lioness of House Atreides. We will guide you up Secher Nbiw, the golden passage." Ghanima heard the code word, Secher Nbiw.Immediately, the sealed memories flowed back into her consciousness.Memories are neatly arranged and flowing, and the mother's consciousness in the body wanders around the memory flow, and she is the guardian of the gate of memory.At this moment, Ganima knew that she had conquered the tumultuous past inside her.She has a door through which she can peer into the past when she needs to.Months of self-hibernation had created a safe fortress within which she could manage her physical body.As soon as she realizes where she stands and with whom, she turns to Leto, wanting to explain to him the change that has taken place in her. Leto let go of her arm. "Did your plan succeed?" Ghanima asked in a low voice. "Everything is going well," Leto said. Alia woke up from the shock and yelled at a group of guards standing to her left: "Get them!" Leto bent down, grabbed the fallen door with one hand, and threw it at the guard.Two of the guards were nailed to the wall, and the rest stepped back in horror.The door weighs half a ton, and this kid can throw it around. Only then did Arya realize that there must have been more guards down in the corridor outside the door, and that Leto had eliminated them when he entered, and that the child had destroyed her impenetrable door. Jessica made the same assumption after seeing the two bodies nailed to the wall and seeing the power Leto possessed.But what Ghanima had just said had triggered her Bee Geist and forced her to focus. "What plan?" Jessica asked. "Golden Passage, for the plans of the Empire, our Empire," Leto said.He nodded at Farrakon, "Don't think too bad of me, cousin. I'm at your service too. Alia wants Ghanima to kill you. I'd rather let you live happily ever after go down." Alia screamed at the guards cowering in the hallway: "I order you, grab them." But the guards refused to enter the house. "Wait here for me, sister," Leto said. "I've got a nasty job to do." He walked across the room toward Alia. She stepped back in front of him, shrank into a corner, squatted down, and drew out the knife.The green jewels on the handle of the knife reflected the sunlight coming in through the windows. Leto moved on.His hands are free, but they are open and ready. Alia's knife stabbed sharply.Leto jumped up, almost touching the ceiling.He kicked out his left leg and kicked her on the head.She fell to the ground on all fours, leaving a bloodstain on her forehead.The Screaming Blade flew from her hand and slid across the floor across the room.Alia scrambled toward the knife, only to find Leto standing in front of her. Alia hesitated, gathering all the Bee Gist skills she knew.She rose from the floor, balancing in a relaxed position. Leto continued walking towards her. Alia feinted to the left, swung her right shoulder, and kicked out her right leg, tiptoeing straight across.If the attack is in place, such a kick can kick out a person's internal organs. Leto took the kick with his right arm, then grabbed her by the foot, lifted her up, and swung her out of the circle at the height of his head.The speed of rotation became faster and faster, her robe kept whipping against her body, and the room was filled with the sound of the skirt being broken. Everyone else lowered their heads and hid aside. Alia kept screaming, but Leto continued to swing her.Gradually, she stopped crying. Leto slowly brought the tach back down and gently lowered her to the floor.She lay there, panting. Leto bent over her. "I could have thrown you against the wall," he said. "Maybe that's the best solution. But it's your choice." Alia's eyes looked left and right. "I've conquered the life inside me," Leto said. "Look at Gany, she too..." Ghanima interrupted, "Alia, I can teach you—" "No!" came the pained voice from Alia.Her chest heaved, and voices gushed from her mouth.The voices are fragments, some are cursing, some are praying. "See! Why didn't you listen to me!" And: "Why did you do that! What happened?" Then: "Shut them up!" Jessica covered her eyes.She felt Falcon put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Alia was still roaring: "I'm going to kill you!" A hysterical curse burst out of her body, "I'm going to drink your blood!" Voices in various languages ​​began to emerge from her mouth, in a mess, making people Puzzling. The guards huddled in the hallway made the sandworm gesture, then plugged their fists to their ears.She was possessed by a demon! Leto shook his head.He went to the window and gave it three quick blows, smashing the unbreakable crystal-reinforced glass. There was a sly look on Alia's face. From that distorted mouth, Jessica heard her own voice, poorly imitating Bee Geist's magic voice. "All of you! Stand there and don't move!" Jessica lowered her hands and found them covered with tears. Alia rolled over and struggled to her feet. "Don't you know who I am?" she asked.It was her old voice, little Aria's sweet, lilting voice, "Why are you all looking at me like that?" She turned her begging eyes on Jessica, "Mother, tell them to stop." All Jessica could do was shake her head, seized with extreme terror.All those old warnings of Bee Geist came true.She looked at Leto and Ganima standing beside Alia.What do these warnings mean for the poor twins? "Grandmother," Leto said in a pleading tone, "do we have to conduct a trial?" "What right do you have to talk about a trial?" Alia asked. Her voice became the voice of a man, a violent man, a tyrannical man, a lustful man. Both Leto and Ganima recognized the voice.Old Lord Hackney.The same voice rang in Ghanima's head, but the door inside her was closed, and she could feel her mother guarding the door. Jessica remained silent. "Then it's up to me to make the decision," Leto said. "The choice is yours, Arya. Trial by the Demon, or..." He shook his head towards the shattered window. "What right do you have for me to choose?" Alia asked.Still the old baron's voice. "The devil!" shrieked Ghanima, "let her choose!" "Mother," Alia pleaded in a little girl's voice, "Mother, what are they doing? What do you want me to do? Help me." "Help yourself," Leto ordered.Then, for a split second, he saw the broken image of his aunt in her eyes, through which she looked helplessly at him. The image quickly disappears.Her body moved, like a stick, her body stiffened, and she walked with difficulty.She kept hesitating, she kept falling, she kept turning back, and then she kept turning and moving on.Getting closer and closer to the window. The old baron's voice came frantically from her lips. "Stop! Stop, I say! I command you! Stop! Feel this!" Alia put her hands over her head and stumbled to the window.She leaned her legs against the ledge, the voice still roaring. "Don't do this! Stop, I can help you! I have a plan. Listen to me. Stop, I'm talking. Wait!" Alia took her hands from her head and clutched at the broken casement.With a sudden effort, she pulled herself away from the window sill and disappeared out of the window.She didn't even scream as she fell. Inside the house they heard a scream from the crowd outside, followed by a dull crash. Leto looked at Jessica. "We told you to have mercy on her." Jessica turned and buried her face in Farraken's top.