Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [205]
Paul dug deeper. The spice sharpened the images until the details were too intense, too difficult to discern. The fragments suddenly coalesced, and he saw a true vision, like a snapshot of reality exploding inside his mind: He felt himself lying on a cold floor. He was bleeding, a knife wound deep within him. He felt warm blood pouring onto the floor. His own blood. With each pulse of his slowing heart, more and more redness drained away.
It was a mortal wound; he knew it as surely as any animal that crawls away to die. Paul’s mind spun. He tried to look beyond himself to see where he was, to see who was with him. He was going to fade away and die there. . . .
Who had killed him? Where was this place?
At first he thought he was the ancient blind Preacher dying among crowds before the Temple of Alia in hot Arrakeen . . . but this wasn’t Dune. There was no mob, no hot desert sunshine. Paul could discern the outlines of an ornate ceiling above him, a strange fountain nearby. He was in a palace somewhere, a great domed and colonnaded structure. Perhaps it was the Palace of Emperor Muad’Dib, like the model the ghola children had built in the recreation room. He could not tell.
Then he remembered an event from his library research. Count Fenring had stabbed him . . . an assassination attempt that would have placed the daughter of Feyd-Rautha and Lady Fenring on the new throne. Paul had very nearly died then.
Was he seeing a flashback of that crucial moment in the first years of his reign, during the bloodiest time of his jihad? It was so vivid!
But why, of all the memories that might be locked within him, would this particular one come to the front of his mind? What was its significance?
Something else didn’t seem right. This memory felt uncrystallized and impermanent. Maybe the melange hadn’t triggered his ghola memories at all. What if it had instead activated the famed Atreides prescience? Perhaps this was a vision of something deadly that was yet to occur.
As he lay writhing on his bed, deep in the spice-induced vision, Paul felt the pain of the wound as if it were unbearably real. How can I prevent this from happening? Is this a true future I am seeing, a new vision of how my ghola body will die?
The scene blurred before him. The dying Paul continued to bleed on the floor, his hands covered with red. Looking up, Paul was shocked to see himself, a young face very much like the one he routinely saw in a mirror. But this version of his face was pure evil, with mocking eyes and the laughter of gloating triumph.
“You knew I would kill you!” his other self shouted. “You could just as well have driven in the dagger with your own hands.” Then he greedily consumed more spice, like a victor taking his spoils.
Paul saw himself laughing, and he felt his own life fading. . . .
PAUL WAS BEING shaken out of the blackness. His muscles and joints ached terribly, but this was nothing like the searing pain of the deep knife wound.
“He’s coming around.” Sheeana’s voice, grim, almost scolding.
“Usul—Usul! Can you feel me?” Someone was clasping his hand. Chani.
“I don’t dare risk another stimulant.” It was one of the Bene Gesserit Suk doctors. Paul knew them all, since they had been so maddeningly efficient at checking the gholas for any possible physical flaw.
His eyes flickered open, but his vision was veiled with a blue spice haze. He saw Chani now, looking worried. Her young face was so beautiful, and such a stark contrast to that evil, laughing image of himself.
“Paul Atreides, what have you done?” Sheeana demanded, looming over him. “What were you hoping to accomplish? This was damned foolish.”
His voice was dry, barely a croak. “I was . . . dying. Stabbed. I saw it.”
This both alarmed and excited Sheeana. “You remember your first life? Stabbed? As an old blind man in Arrakeen?”
“No. Different.” He searched in his mind, realized the truth. He’d had a vision, but had not triggered the full return of his memories.
Chani gave him water, which he gulped. The Suk doctor hovered over him,