Humming on their small suspensor fields, the hunter-seekers drifted out like predatory eels, accelerating as they acquired targets. Cylindrical shafts as long as a hand, each sporting a poisoned needle at its nose, they rode forward noisily on suspensor fields.

With a flash of icy dread, Paul realized that he had seen this before in a dream — many little attackers, countless stinging needles, a thousand painful deaths. His prescient visions were often confusing and rarely literal. And now another recent dream clicked into place, like a tumbler in a complex locking mechanism: a vivid image of the detailed design carvings on the audience chamber walls blurred together with the wooden fish carving leaping over the wooden waves… and the image sharpened enough so that he knew where he had seen it before: on the old headboard of his bed in the Arrakeen Residency.

The headboard that had folded down so that the first hunter-seeker could emerge. That was what the dream had been trying to tell him, but he had not been able to interpret it properly. Not soon enough.

Now he counted at least a dozen of the weapons, then saw at a glance that they had a modified design based on bootlegged Ixian models: self-guiding tracker systems and kill-programming driven by rudimentary impulses. Though based on the same general principles, these looked different from the one that had emerged from his headboard, which had been a mere sliver of metal. These hunter-seekers were more complex, though their primitive programming could target only general victims, not specific individuals. Nevertheless, a Caladan dragon shark was primitive as well, and extremely deadly.

The faint sound of ominous movement, the gaudily dressed audience members, the grand celebration — every instant echoed in Paul’s mind in a horrible flash of déjà vu: His father’s wedding day, the flying razor-edged disks, Swordmaster Dinari and his heroic death, Archduke Armand mangled. Ilesa so lovely in her nuptial gown… then covered in blood.

Chani!

He could not let it happen again.

In a cluster, four hunter-seekers shot toward the throne. With a swift and desperate push, he forced Chani to the floor even as she stood to fight. “Stay down!” In a blur, he then knocked Irulan sideways, sending her to scrabble for shelter under her overturned chair, while Alia bounded down the steps and out of the way.

The first hunter-seeker slammed its needle prow into the center of the throne where Paul had been sitting only seconds earlier.

Reacting without hesitation, Fedaykin guards sprang from the aisles and the sides of the chamber and dove forward to protect Muad’Dib with their own bodies. Bludd bounded onto the stage, his rapier drawn to slash at the whirring projectiles.

But Paul was moving to stop the hunter-seekers himself. The floating needle weapons came so fast that he could avoid them only one at a time. One buzzed beneath his arm, and he twisted violently to the left to avoid its sting. Two Fedaykin threw themselves in the hunter-seekers’ paths to intercept the deadly devices with their chests. The men lay writhing and spasming from the discharged poison; they would be dead within moments.

So much panicked movement, and so many people swarming around the throne area, confused the devices’ targeting. At least twenty hunter-seekers had been launched, maybe more, and many had already found victims.

With a sharp thrum of metal like a struck tuning fork, Bludd’s rapier knocked one of the flying devices out of the air. He stood his ground in front of Irulan, who took advantage of whatever protection her overturned chair might offer. Another hunter-seeker came close, and Bludd battered at it with a flurry of his thin blade.

Without understanding the nature of the threat, the terrified audience began to flee the Celestial Audience Chamber. Those in the front rows turned to run, pushing up against the crush of bodies packed into the immense hall.

Another volley of hunter-seekers emerged from the ornamented openings, and the second wave came streaking toward Paul. Chani lay rigid on the floor, knowing that any movement would draw the attention of the questing devices. But when one of the nearby Fedaykin was struck and collapsed thrashing beside her, she rolled over, instinctively trying to help him.

Paul saw a hunter-seeker change its trajectory and flash toward Chani, but he had become preternaturally aware of each movement around him. With furious speed, he jumped to grab the thing out of the air. Knowing the suspensor field would make a firm grip difficult, he squeezed hard as he clamped down.

He felt a painful, burning sting.

A Mentat assessment flashed the immediate answer to him. The middle of the hunter-seeker’s cylindrical shaft was girdled with another ring of short, fine needles, also dripping poison. Though the lethal points bit into his hand, he squeezed tighter, seized control, and smashed its nose onto the polished stone of the platform.

He could already feel the poison working its way into his blood, but he had the ability to neutralize it. With the Bene Gesserit cellular powers he had learned, Paul identified the chemicals, unlocked their modes of toxicity, and altered the molecules to neutralize the poison. It took only a moment, but it was a moment he did not have. More hunter-seekers sped toward him.

But now he was immune to that particular toxin, and his body’s biochemistry manufactured the antidote. Lunging back to his feet, he grabbed another hunter-seeker that buzzed directly in front of his face. He felt the sting of the needles again as he smashed it to the floor.

Turning to find another target, however, Paul realized that the second device had contained a different poison from the first — equally deadly, but one that required a new, independent effort for him to alter its chemistry and make himself immune. Either of the toxins would have been fatal to a normal human, and Paul had to expend the extra effort to counteract two toxins instead of just one. It was nonsensically redundant.

He suddenly understood that in planning this attack, someone had tailored it precisely, taking Paul’s abilities into account — someone who had intimate knowledge of the Emperor’s particular skills.

The mysterious opponent had not underestimated Paul-Muad’Dib Atreides. The assassination attempt had come when he was with those he loved, which forced him not only to protect himself but to protect all of them — which meant he was facing a threat as convoluted and extravagant as the most tortuous training sessions that Duncan Idaho and Thufir Hawat had concocted for him when he was a boy. If not for Bludd’s assistance, Irulan would probably already be dead.

Paul became like a whirling dervish, grabbing hunter-seekers, smashing them into each other, slamming them to the floor, leaping for others with hands outstretched before they could strike Chani, Irulan, Alia, or even Bludd. His chair was studded with stray hunter-seekers, and each projectile he grabbed was armed with a different poison. More and more complexities!

He was exhausted, his body clamoring from the effort of his accelerated fight as well as from driving back the toxins.

By now the air was abuzz with more hunter-seekers than he could stop, perhaps a hundred. His hands, arms, chest, and back had been stung repeatedly. He could barely concentrate now, forced to devote most of his effort to counteracting the dangerous chemicals building up in his bloodstream. Bodies lay in heaps on the dais and out in the audience. The crowd was a cacophony of screams.

From out in the audience, Korba bellowed orders, finally acting like a Fedaykin again rather than a priest. He commanded the soldiers to shoot out the cubbyholes, preventing more weapons from being launched. Someone — Bludd? — thrust a body shield at Paul and activated it; the field would slow the hunter-seekers, making it easier to intercept them. Bludd activated a shield of his own, apparently having brought the protective devices despite Paul’s orders that they were not to be used. Rather than insubordination, the act now appeared to be remarkable foresight.

Korba’s men, also wearing full shields, waded through the bodies, using clubs, stretches of fabric, and gloved hands to eliminate more of the hunter-seekers. Over half of the men perished in the effort, but their companions continued, regardless.

Despite his difficulty focusing, Paul at last saw the threat diminishing and he concentrated more of his personal energy on stopping the waves of poison within him. When he finally returned to awareness and found himself collapsed near the base of the throne, breathing heavily, he realized the attack was over.

Or was it? He sensed something more, a brooding danger like a subsonic pulse throbbing at the back of his mind.

Chani came toward him, looking exhausted, but her eyes were bright and her skin flushed pink. She was intact, though her clothes were torn and her hair in disarray. “Usul, you are hurt!”

“I will live.” Feeling uneasy, he looked around at the horrific aftermath. Most of the crowd had been evacuated from the Celestial Hall, while more guards and medical personnel were trying to push their way in. All in the audience who had been touched by a hunter-seeker’s poison were either dying or dead, and many other hapless celebrants had been injured in the panic.

Paul tried to calm himself, but a threat still clamored inside his skull. As far as he could see, all the devices had been neutralized, and the cubbyholes had been destroyed. Then why did he still feel such imminent danger? It pulsed in his mind, refused to go away.

His head rang, and he found it difficult to think clearly. Though he had counteracted the poisons in his body, their aftereffects left him physically drained.

Still, the sense of supreme danger roared around him like a wind.

Chani sat at his side and put her arms around him, imparting strength to him as she held him close. Suddenly, the silent warning blared in his mind, like an unexpected spike on a power grid. He couldn’t understand it, but couldn’t ignore it, either. Paul did not question what he felt.

Using the last of his strength, he grabbed Chani and began to move. In the same instant, Swordmaster Bludd surprised them. “My Lord! Down!” Like a juggernaut, Bludd pushed them both so that all three tumbled away from the throne and off the edge of the dais. They fell onto the grisly cushion of dead bodies strewn on the floor about them.

A fraction of a second later, a small, hidden bomb exploded from beneath the elaccawood throne, hurling a rippling fireball over the entire dais.