Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [189]
Exhausted even in victory, Sheeana stared around the city, her face filled with awe and pleasure. As she walked alone down a devastated street, she saw a young boy standing there by himself between the towering, exotic buildings. Looking wrung out but far more powerful than she had ever seen him, was the transformed boy Leto II. He had left the sandworms, having directed them off into the city, but even though he stood here in front of her, he was still part of them.
As Leto craned his neck to look up at one of the dangling tramcars, Sheeana noticed an oddness about him, a looming presence that hadn’t been there before. She understood. “You have your memories back.”
“In perfect detail. I’ve been reviewing them.” Leto’s eyes were full of centuries, now completely blue-within-blue due to incredible spice saturation from the bodies of the sandworms he had controlled. “I am the Tyrant. I am the God Emperor.” His voice sounded louder, yet carried a deep and abiding weariness.
“You are also Leto Atreides, brother to Ghanima, son of Muad’Dib and Chani.”
In response, he smiled as if she had lifted some of his burden. “Yes, that too. I’m everything my predecessor was—and everything the worms are. The pearl of dreaming inside them has been broken open. He sleeps no more.”
Sheeana recalled the quiet boy aboard the no-ship. His past had been worse than anyone else’s, and now that innocent boy was truly gone.
“I remember every death I caused. Every one. I remember all of my Duncans, and the reasons each died.” He looked up, then grasped her arm and pulled her back toward a twisted building that was stuck halfway out of the ground.
Seconds later, the invisible suspensor line high above snapped, and the tramcar hurtled down to smash on the street exactly where the two had been standing. Dead Face Dancers lay sprawled in the wreckage.
“I knew it would fall,” Leto said.
She smiled gently. “We each have our special talents.”
The two of them climbed the high rubble of a collapsed building to get a better view of the city’s wreckage. Confused and disoriented robots milled around the smoldering piles of wreckage and broken structures, as if waiting for instructions.
“I am a Kwisatz Haderach,” Leto II said, his voice distant. “And so was my father. But it is much different now. Did I plan for all this long ago, as part of my Golden Path?”
As if he had summoned them, four sandworms rose noisily from the churned and smashed ground and loomed over the wreckage. She heard loud grinding noises, and the remaining three worms came from other directions, knocking buildings aside, tunneling through the wreckage. Slightly larger than before, they circled Leto and Sheeana.
The largest worm, the one she had named Monarch, turned its head toward the two of them. Unafraid, Leto climbed down the remains of the building to approach the creature.
“My memories are back,” Leto said to Sheeana, stepping forward, “but not the dreaming existence I had as the God Emperor, back when man and worm were one.” Monarch laid its head on the base of the rubble pile, as did the companion worms, like supplicants before a king. The cinnamon odor of melange filled the air from the exhalations of the beasts.
Reaching out, Leto stroked the rounded edge of Monarch’s mouth. “Shall we dream together again? Or should I let you go back to a peaceful sleep?”
Without fear, Sheeana also touched the worm, feeling the hard skin of the rings.
With a sigh, the boy added, “I miss the people I used to know, especially Ghanima. Your ghola program didn’t bring her back with me.”
“We didn’t consider personal costs or consequences,” Sheeana said. “I’m sorry.”
Tears welled in Leto’s dark blue eyes. “There are so many painful memories from before I took the sandtrout as part of me. My father refused to make the choice I did—refused to pay the price in blood for the Golden Path, but I thought I knew better. Ah, how arrogant we can be in our youth!”
In front of Leto, the