Anyone aware of the routine here in Sietch Tabr would have suspected at once that this must be Stilgar, Naib of the Sietch, guardian of the orphaned twins who would one day take up the mantle of their father, Paul Muad'Dib. The hooded figure moved with a betraying swish of fabric, took up a station at one side of the arched doorway. It avoided the sleeping child, paused on the gridded air inlet at an upper corner, probed a bulge in the green and gold wall hangings which softened the enclosing rock. There was a sense of menace in it, a restless dissatisfaction. Once more the light flowed around the chamber, testing, questing. This time there was a suggestion of source and movement to it: a hooded figure filled the arched doorway at the chamber's edge and the light originated there. Now there was only the sound of even breathing and, faint behind it, a reassuring drip-drip-drip of water collecting in a catch basin from the windstill far above the cave.Īgain the light appeared in the chamber - slightly larger, a few lumens brighter. As the light passed across closed eyelids, the small figure stirred. Encountering the deep green side of a bed, it leaped upward, folded itself across the bed's surface.īeneath the green covering lay a child with rusty hair, face still round with baby fat, a generous mouth - a figure lacking the lean sparseness of Fremen tradition, but not as water-fat as an off-worlder.

A questing circle about two centimeters in diameter, it moved erratically - now elongated, now an oval. The light glowed without apparent source, having its existence only on the red fabric surface woven of spice fiber. A spot of light appeared on the deep red rug which covered the raw rock of the cave floor.

Alia atreides children of dune tv