Muad’Dib was never born and never died. He is eternal, like the stars, the moons, and the heavens.

—The Rite of Arrakeen

No mother should have to attend the funeral of her son.

In a private box overlooking Arrakeen’s central square, Jessica and Gurney stood beside Alia, Duncan, Stilgar, and the newly pardoned Princess Irulan. A funeral coach approached them, draped in black and pulled by two Harmonthep lions. Irulan had suggested this touch of Corrino symbolism, a tradition that had accompanied the mourning of emperors for centuries.

Jessica knew that this would be nothing like a traditional Fremen funeral. Alia had planned the ceremony, insisting that the carefully crafted—and continuously growing—legend of Muad’Dib demanded it. The whole Plain of Arrakeen, it seemed, could not hold the millions who had come to mourn Muad’Dib.

Just past sunset, the sky was awash with pastels; long shadows stretched across the city. Numerous observation craft flew overhead, some at high altitude. As the sky began to darken, dozens of commissioned Guildships streaked through the atmosphere releasing plumes of ionized metal gases, pumping up the debris in the magnetic field lines to ignite a wondrous aurora show. A blizzard of tiny pellets sprinkled into low, swiftly decaying orbits that created an almost constant meteor shower, as if the heavens were shedding fiery tears for the death of such a great man.

Seven days of pageantry would reach a climax this evening in a celebration of Muad’Dib’s life, rites meant to chronicle and praise Paul’s greatness. As Jessica watched, she felt that the overblown display was more of a reminder of the excesses committed in his name.

An hour earlier, Jessica had watched two Fedaykin place the large funeral urn inside the coach, an ornate jar that should have contained Muad’Dib’s water from the deathstill. But the vessel was empty, because Paul’s body had never been found, despite exhaustive searches. The hungry sands had swallowed him without a trace, as was fitting.

By leaving no body, Paul had enlarged upon his own mythos, and set new rumors in motion. Some people fervently believed he was not actually dead; for years to come, they would no doubt report seeing mysterious blind men who might be Muad’Dib.

She felt a chill as she recalled the report of Tandis, the last Fremen who had seen Paul alive before her son left Sietch Tabr and wandered into the hostile vastness. Paul’s last words, which he’d called back into the night, were, “Now I am free.”

Jessica also remembered a time when Paul was only fifteen, immediately after his ordeal with Reverend Mother Mohiam’s gom jabbar. “Why do you test for humans?” he had asked the old woman.

“To set you free,” Mohiam had said.

Now I am free!

Had Paul, in the end, seen his unorthodox exit as a means to return to his human nature and attempt to leave deification behind?

From the observation platform, she gazed toward the high Shield Wall splashed with fiery bronze light in the last glimmers of dusk. That was the place where Muad’Dib and his fanatical Fremen army had broken through in their great victory against the Corrino Emperor.

Jessica recalled Paul at various ages, from a bright child to a dutiful young nobleman, to the Emperor of the Known Universe and the leader of a Jihad that swept across the galaxy. You may have become Fremen, she thought, but I am still your mother. I will always love you, no matter where you have gone, or what path you took to get there.

As the plodding lions pulled the coach toward the viewing stand, a cadre of uniformed Fedaykin and yellow-robed priests marched alongside. Ahead of them, two heroes of the Jihad led the procession with fluttering green-and-black Atreides banners. The immense, murmurous crowd parted for the coach’s passage.

The throngs were beyond anyone’s ability to count, millions and millions of people crowded into the city and into camps outside, Fremen as well as offworlders. The water softness of the new arrivals was readily apparent, not only in their smooth, unweathered flesh, but in their colorful raiment, faux stillsuits, or outlandish outfits that had been made especially for this occasion. Even those who tried to dress like natives were obviously unauthentic. It was a dangerous time and place for the unwary. There had been killings of outsiders who purportedly did not show the proper respect for the Emperor Muad’Dib.

Jessica fell into a particular category of offworlder: one that had adapted. Upon first arriving on Arrakis sixteen years earlier, she and her family had been softer than they’d realized, but time spent here had hardened them physically and mentally. While taking refuge from Harkonnen treachery, Jessica and her son had lived closer to the Fremen than virtually any other offworlder ever had. They had genuinely become part of the desert, harmonious with it.

Paul had consumed the Water of Life and nearly died, but in the process he gained unfettered access to the sheltered Fremen world. Thus, he not only became one of them, he became them in totality. Muad’Dib was not merely one individual; he encompassed all Fremen who had ever been born and ever would exist. He was their Messiah, the chosen one sent by Shai-Hulud to show them the path to eternal glory. And now, having walked off into the desert, he made the place even more sacred than before. He embodied the desert and its ways, and the winds would spread his spirit across all of human existence.

The funeral coach came to a stop in front of the viewing stand. The robed Fremen driver sat high on top. Showing no outward grief, Alia issued a command to her aides.

Attendants removed the black drapes from the coach, while others unhitched the pair of lions and led them away. The driver climbed down, bowed reverently to the idea of what it contained, then backed into the crowd.

A glow brightened inside the ornate coach, and its sides began to open like the broad petals of a flower, revealing Muad’Dib’s urn inside on a plush purple platform. The urn began to glow as if from an inner sun, shining light onto the surrounding square in the thickening dusk. Some in the crowd fell to their knees attempting to prostrate themselves, but there was not much room for them to move.

“Even in death, my brother inspires his people,” Alia said to her mother. “ ‘Muad’Dib, the One Who Points the Way.’ ”

Jessica comforted herself with the knowledge that Paul would live forever in the memories, stories, and traditions passed on from generation to generation, from planet to planet. Still, deep inside, she could not accept that Paul was dead. He was too strong, too vibrant, too much a force of nature. But his own prescience, his own immensity of grief over what he’d done, had defeated him.

Here, at his funeral, Jessica saw distraught, sorrow-struck people everywhere . . . and felt uncomfortably hollow inside.

Billions and billions of people had died in the name of Muad’Dib and his Jihad. All told, he had sterilized ninety planets, wiping them clean of life. But she knew it had been necessary, made inevitable by his prescience. It had taken her a long time to understand, to believe, that Paul had truly known the righteousness of his actions. Jessica had doubted him, almost turned against him with tragic consequences . . . but she’d eventually learned the truth. She accepted the reality that her son was correct in his assertion that more of humanity would die if he had not taken such a difficult course.

Now, all of the deaths focused into one: Paul Orestes Atreides.

As the urn glowed, Jessica grappled with her feelings of love and loss: alien concepts to the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, but she didn’t care. This is the funeral for my son. She would gladly have let the people see her sadness. But she still could not openly grieve.

Jessica knew what would come next. Upon reaching its maximum brightness, the empty urn would rise on suspensors over the plaza and cast brilliant light over the enthralled crowds below, like the sun of Muad’Dib’s existence, until it rose out of sight into the night sky, symbolically ascending to heaven. Ostentatious, perhaps, but the crowds would view it with awe. It was as grand a show as Rheinvar the Magnificent himself would have put on, and Alia had planned the ceremony with a disturbing intensity and passion.

Now, as the bodiless urn continued to brighten, Jessica heard heavy engines and flapping ornithopter wings overhead. Looking up into the darkening sky that shimmered with artificial auroras and shooting stars, she saw a group of flying craft in a tight formation spewing clouds of dense vapors, coagulating gases that spilled and swirled like a congealing thundercloud. An unexpected addition to the show? With a sound like shattering rocks, a sharp thunderclap rang out above the crowd in the square, followed by a low, menacing rumble.

The people turned away from the funeral urn, sure that this was also part of the ceremony, but Jessica knew it had not been part of the plan. Alarmed, she whispered to Alia, “What is this?”

The young woman whirled, her eyes flashing. “Duncan, find out what’s going on.”

Before the ghola could move, a massive, scowling face appeared on the underside of the cloud, a projection that shone through the rolling knot of vapors. Jessica recognized the countenance instantly: Bronso of Ix.

From the fading rumble of thunder emerged a voice that boomed across the plaza. “Turn away from this circus sham and realize that Muad’Dib was just a man, not a god! He was the son of a Landsraad duke, and no more. Do not confuse him with God—for that dishonors both. Open your eyes to these foolish delusions.”

As the crowd howled in outrage, the glow from the funeral urn sputtered and went out, the suspensors failing so that the urn fizzled and crashed into the square. Mourners cursed the sky, demanding the blood of the man who had disrupted their sacred ceremony.

Overhead, the projected face broke into fragments as evening breezes dispersed the artificial thunderhead. The linked ’thopters simultaneously dropped out of the sky and crashed in multiple fireballs onto the rooftops of the sprawling government buildings that ringed the square.

The screaming crowd ran in all directions, trampling each other. Emergency sirens sounded, while police and medics rushed forth, shifting electronic containment barriers. Alia barked orders and sent zealous priests out into the crowd, ostensibly to calm them but also to search for any accomplices of Bronso.

On their observation stand, Jessica stood her ground. From her vantage, the injuries looked minimal, and she hoped there were no deaths. She grudgingly admired Bronso’s cleverness, knowing he had used Ixian technology to produce his own show. Jessica knew full well, too, that he was skilled enough to elude capture. Bronso himself would be nowhere close to Arrakeen.