A human being can become a terrible weapon. But all weapons can backfire.

—Bene Gesserit Acolytes’ Manual

Tessia often spent the darkest, quietest hours of night alone in their private chambers, because Rhombur needed little sleep, and the restless cyborg leader spent his nights walking through the ceiling tunnels of Vernii, and across the transparent walkways that connected the stalactite structures.

She awoke out of a troubled sleep to a deep, foreboding darkness, and a sensation that something was wrong. As she blinked, Tessia was startled to realize that someone stood near her—an intruder! Her dark-adapted pupils widened as she opened her mouth, sucked in a breath to shout.

A command uttered with the perfect precision of Voice chopped across her consciousness like an axe blade. A female voice. “Silence!”

Tessia’s larynx shut down, her vocal cords locked. Even her lungs refused to exhale. As a Bene Gesserit, she’d been taught how to resist Voice, but this aural blow had been delivered by a powerful expert, someone who had gauged Tessia, measured her, and knew her precise weak points.

As her eyes adjusted, she discerned the looming form of Reverend Mother Stokiah. Tessia felt like an insect specimen pinned to a mounting board by a long needle. She wanted badly to scream, but her voluntary muscles had shut down.

Stokiah leaned closer, her breath soft as a whisper. “You have been deluded into believing that you have freedom of choice. Stand.”

Tessia’s body swung itself out of her bed, like a puppet. Her legs straightened, and her knees locked as she stood before the Reverend Mother.

“The Sisterhood’s rules countermand the wishes of the individual. You have always accepted this. You need to be reminded of your important, yet minuscule, place in our world . . . the Bene Gesserit world.”

Tessia managed to rasp, surprising herself with her own strength, “Refuse.”

“You cannot refuse. I already made that clear.” The wrinkles on Stokiah’s face were a map of black fissures in the gloom. “You have always had a purpose to serve, but now I have another use for you. The Sisterhood cannot allow open defiance without consequences. Therefore everyone must see your guilt, and you must feel it. You must know it.” Her papery lips formed a smile. “The Sisterhood has developed a new weapon, a technique that combines both psychological and Jongleur training. I am one of the first, and most powerful, Bene Gesserit guilt-casters, and you will obey.”

Guilt-casters . . . women able to manipulate thoughts and emotions to magnify a person’s own doubts and regrets and reflect them back like a lasbeam ricocheting off a mirror. Tessia had thought them only a frightening rumor leaked by the proctors in order to compel unruly acolytes.

“You must feel so sorry about what you have done.” Stokiah’s voice was slippery and poisonous, not at all compassionate. “So sorry, and so terribly guilty.”

Tessia felt the psychic waves. Her heart hammered, and her conscience became a palpable weight. She could hardly breathe.

“How could you betray the Sisterhood, after all we have done for you? All we’ve taught you?” Stokiah’s insidious tone unlocked flood-gates of memories and regrets in Tessia’s mind. “We gave you a mission, and now you have let us down.” Each word scratched across her nerves like a sharpened steel nail. “You turned your back on us. You failed us. Worst of all, you succumbed to love.”

Tessia wanted to shrink away, desperate to avoid each accusation, but she couldn’t move. The weight thrummed around her, made her head throb, dulled her thoughts.

“You betrayed your son, too. Does Bronso know that Rhombur is not his real father? You allowed yourself to be impregnated with another man’s sperm, for love—yet you refuse to do it for us?”

Though Stokiah’s voice did not change, the volume of the words inside Tessia’s head grew louder and louder. Each phrase became a scream. She closed her eyes, shuddered, tried to withdraw into a corner. Stokiah wielded her power like a Master Jongleur who could manipulate every audience member, stopping hearts with terror or wringing tears from their eyes.

The tiny rational corner that remained in Tessia’s mind insisted that the words were an exaggeration, that they had no merit. She clung to her confidence, her love for Rhombur, for Bronso. And she failed miserably.

Thick oppression wrapped itself around Tessia, strangling her like a black ghost as she collapsed to the floor. She couldn’t hear anymore, but the remembered words continued to echo in her mind. She couldn’t move her body, couldn’t run, couldn’t scream. She tried to retreat, to find a zone of refuge inside her head, convinced she could survive no more of this.

But it continued . . . and continued.

A flicker of respite surprised her then, and she could see again. Stokiah stood at her doorway, ready to depart. “Never forget that you belong to the Sisterhood—heart, mind, soul, and flesh. You exist to serve. Contemplate that in your personal hell.” With a dismissive gesture and an uttered syllable, Stokiah slammed the curtains of guilt back down around Tessia.

With mental screams, she fell deeper and deeper into herself, hiding inside a single black dot of consciousness. But even there, Tessia was not safe. Not even close.

When he returned to their quarters, Rhombur found his wife lying on the floor, conscious but unresponsive. Tessia’s eyes were glazed and unseeing; her skin twitched and trembled as if her nerves were firing in random patterns. He shook her, called out her name, but received no response.

She had folded into herself like a dying butterfly. Lifting her back onto the bed, Rhombur called for emergency medical help. He ordered the immediate shutdown of the Grand Palais and sent teams to look for assassins, fearing that she had been poisoned.

Dr. Yueh rushed in, used his medical kit to check her pulse and brain activity. He ran blood samples through a scanner to detect drugs or toxins. “I see no obvious cause for this, my Lord. No head injury, no telltale marks of a needle or any other known poison-delivery system.”

Rhombur was like an overheated engine about to explode. “Vermillion Hells, something caused it!”

As the alarms continued to sound, Vernius guards rushed to the royal chambers. Gurney Halleck arrived with Duncan Idaho, swiftly followed by a very concerned looking Jessica. Bronso came running into the room with Paul Atreides beside him, the two boys sagging with worry and confusion as they saw Tessia, her jaws clenched together, her eyelids twitching and trembling.

Frightened and angry, Bronso jumped to conclusions. “The technocrats couldn’t kill me, so they attacked my mother instead?”

Rhombur had seen how the climbing equipment had been sabotaged, presumably by agents working for the Technocrat Council. “Is this another attempt to strike at me—through my wife?”

Yueh looked up from his portable diagnostic instrument, looked at the readings from the blood sample, shook his head, and repeated, “No detectable poison.”

“What else could have put her in a state like this?” Duncan asked.

Paul spoke up. “Some kind of stunner, or neural scrambler? Does Ix have any new weapon that could account for this?”

Rhombur felt as if his artificial systems were about to collapse. “I can’t know every project my scientists undertake. I see only the results when a device is ready for marketing. It’s . . . possible, I admit.” He increased the volume of his voice until the windowplates rattled. “Summon Bolig Avati! Tell him his Earl demands his presence—it is not a request.”

Rhombur turned to Jessica. “And what about those three Bene Gesserits? They were here to demand that Tessia become a breeding mistress. Could they have done this? Do they have such powers?”

Jessica paused long enough to be certain of her answer. “I’ve never heard of any such skills.”

Seeking answers, he called for the three Bene Gesserits, and the women were ushered in so swiftly that they nearly tripped on the hems of their robes. They did not seem overly upset as they regarded Tessia, who lay curled up, shivering, lost in some inner maze of pain.

Rhombur demanded, “Well? Are you responsible for this?”

Stokiah raised her chin haughtily. “We have seen this before—it is peculiar to members of our order, very rare. The conflicting pressures of your demands upon Tessia and her obligations to the Bene Gesserit order were too much. But we have ways of treating her on Wallach IX.”

The youngest of the Bene Gesserit trio spoke to Yueh. “Your medicine can treat diseases or poisons, Wellington, but this . . . this appears to be a condition of the mind. Yes, I am aware of similar collapses among the Bene Gesserit. The mind ties itself into a Gordian knot, and it requires a skillful sword to cut apart the twisted strands without destroying the mind.” She turned to the cyborg leader. “Earl Vernius, as Reverend Mother Stokiah suggests, let us take her back to Wallach IX. Only the Sisterhood has ways of treating this.”

“I will not leave her side! If she goes there to be treated, then I go with her.”

“You are not welcome on Wallach IX, Rhombur Vernius,” Stokiah said. “Release Tessia to our care. There is no telling how long our treatment might require, and no guarantee of success. But you cannot cure her here. If you love this woman, as you claim, then give us an opportunity to work on her.”

The Suk doctor remained at a loss. “I’ll continue to run tests, my Lord, but I suspect my diagnosis will not change. If there’s a chance, and time is of the essence . . .”

“Don’t worry, Rhombur. I can go see her as the treatment progresses,” Jessica offered. “The Sisterhood takes care of its own.”

Bronso knelt beside Tessia, his reddish hair tousled with sweat. “Mother, come back to us! I don’t want them to take you.” But she did not respond.

Rhombur realized that he had already lost. He felt cast adrift, a man floating in space with no lifeline and no oxygen tank. “Keep trying, Yueh. I will give you two more days. If you can’t do anything to save her by then, then I’ll have to trust the witches.”