As evening falls at the Cave of the Ridges, Jessica reflects on the Fremen obsession with moisture and the harsh adjustment to stillsuit life. Paul arrives with Chani, troubled because Jamis's body is being rendered for its water. Chani explains that Jamis's tribal water belongs to the tribe, but the water owed from combat belongs to Paul; Jessica recognizes that water functions as wealth and power on Arrakis, so Paul must accept it to avoid rejecting Fremen custom.

Stilgar begins Jamis's funeral rites, and the Fremen gather around Jamis's possessions. One by one, Jamis's friends claim objects from the pile while saying how Jamis helped them. Paul realizes he is expected to participate despite having killed Jamis, and after Jessica models the ritual, Paul takes Jamis's baliset and says Jamis taught him that killing carries a cost. When Paul weeps, the Fremen are awed because he gives precious moisture to the dead, deepening their reverence for him.

Chani formally blesses the water recovered from Jamis and measures it as Paul-Muad'Dib's portion: thirty-three liters and seven and three-thirty-seconds drachms. Paul accepts the watercounters but asks Chani to hold them for him, not realizing until afterward that entrusting watercounters to a woman carries courtship implications. Stilgar treats Paul gently as an outsider still learning the ways of the tribe.

Stilgar then leads the group through hidden passages cooled by damp air from windtraps. Paul and Jessica are brought to a vast underground reservoir, where Jamis's water is added to the communal store with meticulous measurement. Stilgar reveals that this cache contains more than thirty-eight million decaliters and that the Fremen have thousands of such hidden reservoirs, all preserved from the sandtrout and dedicated to their long plan to transform Arrakis.

Before the reservoir, Stilgar voices the Fremen dream: to bind the dunes with plants, make the polar ice retreat, create lakes and canals, and leave only the deep desert for the sandworms and spice. Jessica recognizes the power of this ecological religion and sees how such people, united by a goal, could become a weapon for Paul. Paul, however, feels trapped by his prescient visions and senses that the jihad in his name is gaining unstoppable momentum.

After the group returns to the main cavern to await the moonrise, Paul plays Jamis's baliset and sings one of Gurney Halleck's songs at Chani's request. Jessica is disturbed by the song's romantic force and by Chani's growing pull on Paul. Paul, grieving and afraid of the future, concludes that Jessica is unknowingly his enemy because her choices, training, and ambition are helping bring the jihad he dreads.