Today, the swordmaster trainees would live or die based on what they had learned.

Standing beside an assortment of weapons, the legendary Mord Cour conferred in low tones with junior training master Jeh-Wu. The testing field was damp and slick from a light rain earlier that morning. The clouds still hadn’t drifted away.

Soon I will be a Swordmaster, both in body and mind, Duncan thought.

Those who passed— survived?— this phase would still face an intense battery of oral examinations covering the history and philosophy of the fighting disciplines they had been studying. Then, the victors would return to the main administration island, view the sacred remains of Jool-Noret, and go back home.

As Swordmasters.

“A tiger on one arm and a dragon on the other,” Mord Cour called out. His silvery hair had grown a full ten centimeters since Duncan had last seen him on the barren volcanic island. “Great warriors find a way to overcome any obstacle. Only a truly great warrior can survive the Corridor of Death.”

Of the original 150 trainees in the class, only 51 remained— and each failure taught Duncan a lesson. Now he and Hiih Resser, arguably the top students, stood side by side, as they had for years.

“Corridor of Death?” The tip of Resser’s left ear had been cut off in a knife-fighting exercise; since he thought the scar made him look like a battle-hardened veteran, the redhead had decided never to undergo any cosmetic surgery to repair the damage.

“Just hyperbole,” Duncan said.

“You think so?”

Taking a deep, calm breath, Duncan focused on the comforting presence of the Old Duke’s sword in his hand. The pommel’s inlaid rope pattern gleamed in sunlight. A proud blade. He vowed to be worthy of it, and was glad to carry the sword now.

“After eight years, it’s too late to quit,” he said.

Enclosed by a shield-fence, the outdoor training course was hidden from the gathered trainees. To survive the obstacles and reach the end of the course they would have to react to assassin meks, solido holo-illusions, booby traps, and more. This would be their final physical test.

“Come forward and choose your weapons,” Jeh-Wu called.

Duncan buckled two short knives to his belt, along with the Old Duke’s sword. He hefted a heavy mace, but exchanged it for a long battle lance.

Jeh-Wu tossed his dark dreadlocks and stepped forward. Though his voice was hard, it held a hint of compassion. “Some of you might consider this final test cruel, worse than any real combat situation could possibly be. But fighting men must be tempered in a fiery forge of true dangers.”

While he waited, Duncan thought of Glossu Rabban, who had showed no mercy hunting human prey on Giedi Prime. Real monsters like the Harkonnens could devise sadistic exercises far worse than anything Jeh-Wu might imagine. He took a deep breath, tried to stop the self-defeating flow of fear, and instead visualized himself surviving the ordeal.

“When Ginaz delivers a Swordmaster to a noble House,” old Mord Cour continued, “that family depends on him with their lives, their safety, their fortunes. Since you bear this responsibility, no test can be too difficult. Some of you will die today. Do not doubt it. Our obligation is to release only the best fighters in the Imperium. There can be no turning back.”

The gates opened. Attendants boomed out names, one at a time, from a list, and several of the trainees stepped through, disappearing behind the solid-front barricade. Resser was among the first to be called.

“Good luck,” Resser said. He and Duncan clasped in the half handshake of the Imperium, and then he was summoned. Without looking back, the redhead slipped through the ominous doorway.

Eight years of rigorous training culminated in this moment.

Duncan waited behind other toughened students, some oily with nervous sweat, some blustering with bravado. More trainees passed through the gate. His stomach knotted with anticipation.

“Duncan Idaho!” one of the attendants finally thundered. Through the opening, Duncan could see the previous student evading weapons that came at him from all directions. The young man whirled, dodged, stutter-stepped, then disappeared from view among the obstacles and meks.

“Come on, come on. It’s easy,” the heavyset attendant growled. “We’ve already had a couple of survivors today.”

Duncan uttered a silent prayer and ran forward into the unknown. The gate slammed shut behind him with an ominous clank.

Focused on what he was doing, letting his mind settle into a fugue state of instant reaction, he heard a blur of voices filling his mind: Paulus Atreides telling him he could accomplish anything he set his mind to; Duke Leto counseling him to take the high ground, the moral course, never to forget compassion; Thufir Hawat telling him to watch all points in a full hemispherical perimeter around his body.

Two meks loomed on either side of the corridor, metal monsters with glittering sensor-eyes that followed his every movement. Duncan began to dash past, then stopped, made a feint, dove and tumbled by.

Watch all points. Whirling, Duncan swung backward with his lance, heard it strike edged metal, deflecting one of the meks’ weapons, a thrown spear. Perfect perimeter. Warily, he danced forward on the balls of his feet, maintaining balance, ready to dart in any direction.

The words of his school instructors came to him: shaggy-haired Mord Cour, iguana-faced Jeh-Wu, enormously fat Rivvy Dinari, pompous Whitmore Bludd, even stern Jamo Reed, keeper of the prison island.

His tai-chi instructor had been an attractive young woman, her body so flexible that it appeared to be composed entirely of sinew. Her soft voice had a hard edge. “Expect the unexpected.” Simple words, but profound.

The fighting machines contained mechanisms triggered by eye-sensors that followed his rapid/cautious movements. But, in compliance with Butlerian strictures, the meks could not think like him. Duncan rammed the metal butt of his lance into one mek, then whirled and did the same to the other. He spun away in a gymnastics maneuver, barely eluding impaler-knives that stabbed at him.

As he crept along, he studied the wooden path under his bare feet, looking for pressure pads. Blood spattered the floorboards; off to the side of the course he saw part of a mangled body; he did not take time to identify it.

Farther ahead, he blinded meks with thrown knives that shattered their glassy eyes. Some he toppled with powerful kicks. Four were only holoprojections, which he detected by noticing subtle differences in light and reflection, a trick Thufir Hawat had taught him.

One of the island instructors had been a mere boy with a baby face and a killer’s instincts . . . a ninja warrior who taught stealth methods of assassination and sabotage, the supreme skill of melting into the slightest shadows and striking in absolute silence. “Sometimes the most dramatic statement can be made with an unseen touch,” the ninja had said.

Synthesizing eight years of training, Duncan drew parallels between the various disciplines, similarities of method— and differences. Some techniques were clearly useful for what he faced at that moment, and his mind raced to sort them out, selecting appropriate methods for each challenge.

Darting past the last of the deadly meks, his heart pounded against the inside of his chest. Duncan scrambled down the slope to the rugged shore, following course markers, still bounded by the shield-fence. Glowing red suspensors directed him over a frothy blue-white pool of geysers and volcanic hot springs, but waves from the aquamarine sea lapped over the rim of the rocky bowl, cooling the temperature to just below scalding.

Duncan dove in and stroked down to underwater lava tubes bubbling with mineral water. Already desperate for air, he swam through the heated water until he emerged in another steaming hot spring where fierce-looking meks plunged in to attack him.

Duncan fought like a wild animal— until he realized that his mission was to get through this Corridor of Death, not to subdue all opponents. He blocked kicks, drove meks back, and broke free to dash along the trail, toward the jungle highlands and the next phase. . . .

Across a deep chasm hung a narrow rope bridge, a difficult challenge of balance, and Duncan knew it would get worse. In the middle of the span, solido-projected holo-beasts appeared, ready to attack him. He slashed out with his lance, battered them with his rigid hands.

But Duncan didn’t fall. A student’s worst enemy is his own mind. Panting, he focused his thoughts. The challenge is to control fear. I must never forget that these are not real adversaries, no matter how solid their blows feel.

He had to use every skill he had learned, assemble the diverse techniques— and survive, just like a real battle. The Ginaz School could teach methods, but no two combat situations were identical. A warrior’s greatest weapons are mental and physical agility, coupled with adaptability.

Concentrating on the direct route across the chasm, he took one step after another. Using his spear to knock aside the unreal opponents, he reached the opposite end of the rope, sweating and exhausted, ready to drop.

But he pushed on. Toward the end.

Through a short, rocky gorge— the perfect place for an ambush— he sprinted along a planked path, pounding a steady rhythm on it with bare feet. He saw pits and trapdoors. Hearing a burst of gunfire, he rolled and tumbled, then sprang back to his feet. A spear flew at him, but Duncan used his lance for leverage and vaulted over the obstacle, spinning his body in a blur.

As he landed, a glimmer of motion streaked toward his face. With lightning speed he whipped the lance staff in front of his eyes, felt two sudden, sharp impacts in the wood. A pair of tiny flying meks had embedded themselves in the shaft, like self-motivated arrowheads.

He saw more blood on the deck, and another butchered body lying on the ground. Though he was not supposed to think of fallen comrades, he regretted the loss of even one talented student who had made it through so much training . . . only to fall there, in the last challenge. So close.

Sometimes he caught glimpses of Ginaz observers beyond the crackling shield-fence, keeping pace with him, other Swordmasters, many of whom he remembered. Duncan didn’t dare permit himself to wonder how his fellow students had fared. He didn’t know if Resser was still alive.

So far he had used the knives and the lance, but not the Old Duke’s sword, which remained at his side. It was a reassuring presence, as if Paulus Atreides accompanied him in spirit form, whispering advice along the way.

“Any young man with balls as big as yours is a man I must have as part of my household!” the Old Duke had once told him.

With the vanquished meks behind him, blocked on both sides by the shield-fence, Duncan faced the final obstacle— a huge sunken cauldron of burning oil, a vat spanning the path, blocked on both sides by the shield-fence. The end of the Corridor of Death.

He coughed in the acrid smoke, covered his mouth and nose with his shirt fabric, but he still couldn’t see. Blinking away irritated tears, he studied the buried cauldron, which looked like a hungry demon’s mouth. A narrow rim encircled the vat, slippery with splatters of oil, thick with noxious vapors.

The final obstacle. Duncan would have to pass it somehow.

Behind him, a high metal gate shot up across his path, preventing him from returning the way he had come. It was barbed with shigawire, unclimbable.

I never intended to turn back anyway.

“Never argue with your instincts, boy,” Paulus Atreides had counseled him. Based on a gut feeling, the Old Duke had taken the young refugee into his household, despite knowing that Duncan had come from a Harkonnen world.

Duncan wondered if he could possibly vault over the cauldron, but he couldn’t see the far side through the shimmering flames and smoke-smeared air. What if the cauldron was not really round, but distorted, to trap a student making assumptions? Tricks within tricks.

Was the vat only a holoprojection? But he felt the heat, coughed in the smoke. He threw his lance, and it clanked against the metal side.

Hearing a heavy ratchet and the rumble of metal plates behind him, he turned to see the huge gate sliding toward him. If he didn’t move, the barrier would push him into the cauldron.

Drawing the Old Duke’s sword, he swished it through the air. The weapon seemed entirely useless. Think!

Expect the unexpected.

He studied the shield-fence on his right, the shimmer of the force field. And remembered his shield-training sessions on Caladan with Thufir Hawat. The slow blade penetrates the body shield, but it must move at just the right speed, not too fast and not too slow.

He stroked the Duke’s sword in the air for practice. Could he breach the flickering fence and tumble through? If a slow blade penetrated the shield, the energy of the barrier could be moved, changed, shifted. The sharp point of the sword could distort the field, puncture an opening. But how long would a shield remain compromised, if penetrated by a sword? Could he push his body through the temporary opening before the shield closed again?

Behind him, the barbed gate ground closer, nudging him toward the burning cauldron. But he would not go.

Duncan visualized how he would accomplish what he had in mind. His options were limited. He stepped toward the pulsing barrier and stopped where he could smell the ozone and feel the crackle of energy on his skin. He tried to remember one of the prayers his mother had sung to him, before Rabban had murdered her. But he could recall only fragments that made no sense.

Gripping the Old Duke’s heavy sword, Duncan leaned into the shield-fence and pierced it as if it were a wall of water, then dragged the blade up, feeling the ripples of the field. It reminded him of gutting a fish.

Then he pushed himself forward, following the sword point, dropping through the resistance— and fell in a wave of dizziness onto a rough surface of black lava. He rolled and landed on his feet, still gripping the sword, ready to fight the Swordmasters if they challenged him for breaking the rules. Suddenly he was safe from the cauldron and the moving gate.

“Excellent! We have another survivor.” Frizzy-haired Jamo Reed, released from prison-island duty, rushed up to embrace Duncan in a bearlike hug.

Swordmaster Mord Cour and Jeh-Wu weren’t far behind, wearing alien expressions of delight on their faces. Duncan had never seen either of them look so pleased.

“Was that the only way out?” he asked, trying to catch his breath as he looked at Swordmaster Cour.

The old man gave a boisterous laugh. “You found one of twenty-two ways, Idaho.”

Another voice intruded. “Do you want to go back and search for the other possibilities?” It was Resser, grinning from ear to scarred ear. Duncan slipped the Old Duke’s sword into its scabbard and clapped his friend on the back.