Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [37]
The Mother Commander kept her voice neutral, though she, too, felt the pang in her heart. “We must go on with our lives. We still have many enemies to face. Rinya would want us to.”
Janess straightened as she walked. “Yes, she would. She believed you about the Enemy, and so do I.”
Some Sisters doubted the Mother Commander’s urgency. Honored Matres had come running back into the Old Empire, sure that the sky was falling. But before Murbella stripped away all the foundations of the Bene Gesserit, a few of the women had demanded proof that such a terrible opponent truly existed out there. No Honored Matre had ever gone deep enough into Other Memory to remember much of her past; even Murbella could not recall their origin out in the Scattering, and could not say how they had first encountered their Enemy or what had provoked them to genocidal fury.
Murbella couldn’t believe such blindness. Had the Honored Matres just imagined hundreds of planets eradicated by plague? Had they simply wished into existence the great Weapons used to obliterate Rakis and so many other planets?
“We need no further evidence to know the Enemy is out there,” Murbella said curtly to her daughter, as they followed a dry, thorny hedge. “And they are now coming after us. All of us. I doubt the Enemy will make any distinctions among the factions of our New Sisterhood. Chapterhouse itself is certainly within their targeting crosshairs.”
“If they find us,” Janess said.
“Oh, they will find us. And they will destroy us, if we are not prepared.” She looked at the young woman, seeing so much potential in her daughter’s face. “Which is why we need as many Reverend Mothers as possible.”
Janess had thrown herself into her studies with a determination that would have surprised even her obsessive, driven twin. Fighting with her hands and feet, spinning, rolling, dodging, the girl could strike an adversary from all sides, encircling her with speed and power.
Earlier that day Janess had faced off against a tall, wiry girl named Caree Debrak. Caree had come in as a young student from the newly conquered Honored Matres swarming toward Chapterhouse. Harboring resentment against the Mother Commander’s daughter, Caree had used the competitive event as an excuse to vent her anger. She intended to hurt. Janess had practiced the lesson’s moves and expected to beat the girl in fair combat, but the youthful Honored Matre had unleashed a raw form of violence, breaking the rules and nearly breaking Janess’s bones. The female bashar in charge of personal combat training, Wikki Aztin, had dragged the pair apart.
The incident troubled Murbella greatly. “You lost to Caree because the Honored Matres have no inhibitions. You must learn to match them in that, if you mean to succeed here.”
In the past several months, Murbella had detected an ugly undertone, especially among the younger trainees. Though all were supposedly part of a united Sisterhood, they still insisted on segregating themselves, wearing colors and badges, separating into cliques clearly defined by their heritage as either Bene Gesserit or Honored Matre. Some of the more severe malcontents, disgusted with conciliation and refusing to learn or compromise, continued to disappear to their own settlements far to the north, even after the execution of Annine.
As they approached the acolytes’ barracks, Murbella heard a clamor of angry voices through the brittle brown hedges. Rounding a turn in the garden path, they came to the commons, an expanse of withered grass and gravel walkways fronting the bungalows. Normally the acolytes gathered there for games, picnics, and sporting events, though an unexpected dust storm had left a layer of grit on the benches.
Today, most of the class was arrayed on the parched lawn as if it were a battlefield—more than fifty girls in white robes, all acolytes. The girls, divided into distinct groups of Bene Gesserits and Honored Matres, threw themselves upon each other