Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

He grabbed her hand, faced her with a death’s head grin, and he sent his awareness surging over her. The rapport was not as tender, not as sharing, not as encompassing as it had been with Alia and with the Old Reverend Mother in the cavern…but it was a rapport: a sense-sharing of the entire being. It shook her, weakened her, and she cowered in her mind, fearful of him. Aloud, he said: “You speak of a place where you cannot enter? This place which the Reverend Mother cannot face, show it to me.” She shook her head, terrified by the very thought. “Show it to me!” he commanded. “No!” But she could not escape him. Bludgeoned by the terrible force of him, she closed her eyes and focused inward—the-direction-that-is-dark. Paul’s consciousness flowed through and around her and into the darkness. She glimpsed the place dimly before her mind blanked itself away from the terror. Without knowing why, her whole being trembled at what she had seen—a region where a wind blew and sparks glared, where rings of light expanded and contracted, where rows of tumescent white shapes flowed over and under and around the lights, driven by darkness and a wind out of nowhere.