The chapter opens with Princess Irulan’s account of life in the Imperial royal household, where intrigue, spying, concubines, and assassination attempts are ordinary tools of survival. The anecdote about Count Fenring bringing a beautiful slave-concubine to Irulan’s father emphasizes the danger of restraint and subtlety in imperial politics.

In the desert, Paul stands outside the stilltent while Jessica wakes and watches him with grief because his posture reminds Jessica of Duke Leto. Paul and Jessica study the distant escarpment, noticing desert plants and a salt pan that imply water and possibly Fremen presence, but no visible artificial lights. As night falls, Paul prepares their pack and plants a thumper in the crevasse to draw a worm away from their route.

Paul teaches Jessica to cross the open sand with an irregular Fremen walk so their steps resemble natural sand movement rather than prey rhythm. The thumper begins beating behind them, and a worm approaches it, but the pair must continue through exhaustion without falling into a regular pace. Near the far escarpment, Paul accidentally steps onto drum sand, whose booming attracts the worm directly toward them, forcing Paul and Jessica to run for rock.

Paul and Jessica reach a narrow crack in the cliff just before the worm arrives. The huge creature probes the opening, and Paul notices its cinnamon smell and remembers Liet-Kynes’s hint of a connection between worms and spice. A second thumper sounds elsewhere, drawing the worm away, and Paul concludes that Fremen have called it, though Jessica questions whether they meant to help.

Following wind-scoured poles, Paul and Jessica climb a marked route up the cliff and find man-carved steps leading into a sheltered basin filled with desert plants, small animals, and signs of sustained life. The beauty of the place suggests a Fremen-maintained refuge, but the calm ends when armed, unseen Fremen speak from concealment. A man addressed as Stil warns them not to run, while another urges him to take their water quickly before dawn, leaving Paul and Jessica trapped in a future Paul has not foreseen.