Risk it for the bisket," his uncle had said. Bisket, or bisk, or bice, was a common foodstuff in the Bene Gesserit House of Reverend Mothers. It was an ash-like black substance that kept for ages and gave the impression that it was always ready for a meal. The Bene Gesserit ate it when they needed to use the power of fear to frighten someone. It left only faint traces of ash and, according to Abulurd, who recalled those moments from his childhood, it was quite tasty. The name bisket was used to refer to a wide variety of foods in that period. The Bene Gesserit used it to denote any bland food served without spices or sauces, as well as foods that were easy to dispose of in unpleasant manners, such as biskets made from the corpses of infidels. Kiem chuckled at the memory of his early life at school, when there had been a nun who taught him, and a stern father who had believed in the principles of the Bene Gesserit and had taken him to Reverend Mothers in order to be toughened. Kiem still had nightmares in which the black, fear-provoking food called bisket poured from his nose as he woke up screaming, with his hands clamped over his eyes. He grinned. When he had arrived as a Bene Gesserit candidate with his father, he had been sent to a small, dreary school on an icy world for instruction. There he had been beaten daily, and, as a means of toughening him up, he had been made to eat biskets. Abulurd was not supposed to tell me that part. After that, he had been sent to a second school on a lush planet filled with orchards and gardens. The fruit and berries that grew there were made into biskets for their effect on the mind and body. After his experiences there, Kiem had gone to a third school, another miserable planet called Stalna, where he was forced to eat another kind of bisket—black and bitter, even when it was made from the flesh of fish and other raw animal protein. There had been a fourth school, a pleasant place called Ginaz, where the fruits that grew there formed a most delicious bisket and the youngsters in that school ate only that bisket, along with other delicacies. Finally, Kiem had been sent to the Suk School, where he learned what he called "all about the human animal" while learning how to be a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit. He remembered that place like it was yesterday. His tutor, Reverend Mother Anteac, had never fed him with biskets; she taught him how to recognize the signs of death and the use of poisons; she taught him to be aware of everything from food odors to the subtle differences in his classmates' behavior—even those they hoped he didn't notice. During that time, Kiem learned to do a variety of things which he had sworn never to reveal: kill insects with a pointed stick for entertainment, drink bitter, sour-tasting liquids like bisket to make his throat grow dry, use a small device that produced a numbing sensation on his tongue to make eating and drinking pleasant, listen to the pain cries of others, take a thin wooden stick to another person's belly to make them sick. He had found great satisfaction in all those studies, and he had looked forward to taking his training further—then he had met his master, Piter de Vries, and been sent on his first mission, a mission to find the Golden Path to Godhood. A Bene Gesserit had been able to find the Golden Path by a process of elimination. The original Mother Superior had found it and had been able to pass on the secret to the next Mother Superior, and so on. Since that time, there had been only eight Mother Superiors, and all eight of them had been able to tell the story of the Golden Path to a new Mother Superior. Kiem had heard how each of the Mother Superiors found the path by her own methods. Mother Superior Farad'n used her special powers and her own experiences as a child in order to reach a state of ecstasy; Mother Superior Rachael used hypnotic induction with a device known as a biobalance; Mother Superior Vanya used a mathematical device called a MENTO. Kiem remembered his mother's words: "The Mothers could be called Great Mothers." He had heard the term before but had never really thought about it until now. He didn't recall his mother ever saying exactly what she meant by the term, or what it meant. When he tried to recall the story of Mother Superior Vanya, he found himself unable to remember what he knew. The name had faded from his memory. Perhaps, he thought, it was because the memory that he had of Mother Superior Vanya wasn't truly a memory at all. Instead it was something more like a dream. It was a dream that hadn't completely faded from his memory—as if, in his brain, Vanya had been changed into a ghost. It was as if, Kiem thought, the mother he had never known had come to him and explained to him what Vanya had tried to teach her and her fellow Sisters. Vanya had come to meet with his mother, asking for a favor, and the favor had been granted. Kiem had been given a part of his mother, and now the two of them—mother and son—were separate, and she had given him the task of understanding what the Golden Path was. Kiem sighed. He had come to know that he would never know exactly what the Mothers had learned from their experiences, but as a young child, he had been curious about the lives they led and tried to imagine what it would be like to find the Golden Path. He had been told that he would never learn the secrets of the Mothers because it was thought that if a human being knew the secret of how the Golden Path was reached, he would be able to reach it for himself. After all, the Mothers were not gods, and they certainly weren't ordinary humans. What secrets could they have that he did not have? But there was always the memory of Vanya. Vanya had come to his mother, and they had sat together. Somehow the lesson that Vanya had given his mother had also become a part of Kiem. And it, too, was a memory that faded in and out of his thoughts. Kiem had felt that, once a year, the same thing would happen to him—he would feel a sensation, like pain, in the back of his head, and he would get a terrible headache and a feeling that his head was going to split in two. But he couldn't remember anything. He couldn't remember the words or the sensations of the vision—it was always something that came from behind him, not from in front. The memory had faded into darkness that only served to remind him of the pain, the dread, and the memories of that feeling that, someday, he would understand why it came to him. In fact, he had often thought of Vanya as an enemy of the Bene Gesserit—not an enemy to be reckoned with, but certainly not someone that he liked or felt was good for anyone. It was then that he found himself having strange dreams. Vanya was not pleased with Kiem when he looked into his crystal ball. He had dreamed about it often since then—always a dark, smoky dream that faded into darkness. It was as if he could not bear to look into the future and see his life—he could only see a black cloud of nothingness surrounding him, and Vanya, looking at him with a smile, had been his only glimpse into the future. He always woke up the next day with a splitting headache and a feeling that his head would split in two. And that was the only time when he felt the pain, the fear, and the remembrance of that dream. The dream always went away after he woke, and he would find himself thinking about the Mothers and about how there had been eight Mother Superiors who had found the Golden Path and were able to pass it to their successors. He had never thought about anything but becoming one of them. No one could blame him for that, since that had been his dream from the first moment that he had known of the Sisterhood, and there had been times when he had lived his life as a youngster under the impression that he had dreamed about becoming a Reverend Mother. Ironic, he thought, that when he arrived at the Sisterhood, he was introduced to the secrets of the Golden Path. But that changed after only a year—before he had even considered being one of the Sisters, he had been told that he was never to try to be like them. He was to be an assassin. In order to bring that message home, one that would be hard for him to understand, Piter had sent him on his first mission. The story of Piter de Vries was a cautionary tale, at least according to Abulurd. Piter had been sent on his first mission when he was very young, only fifteen years old, and he had returned with a bad reputation and a long list