stage the Fedaykm were unknown, and the Fremen poorly Understood Rebellion continued and the Fremen victo ries spread across the galaxy As the natives of Arrakis moved from planet to planet and system to system, they encountered many faiths not their own some involving lenets or rituals as loathsome to them as the discov enes on Richese had been to the Romans As time worlds, and lives of millions and then billions passed the religious motivations of the Fremen came to play an ever greater part in their battles Slowly, the assur ance of a secure throne for their Mahdi came to be joined by the desire for a ' purified ' empire A particular target of this religious culling came to be the faiths dominated by the Bene Gessent The order which had trained and attempted to dominate Paul s mother the order which had striven so long to produce and use the Kwisatz Haderach that Paul was-that order was of special concern to him Their power and their plans conflicted with his The Fremen attitude toward the Bene Gessent had always been at best ambivalent, and usually fearful and antagonistic But with the coming of Paul Muad Dib their ambivalence was over They could produce their own Reverend Mothers, as they had for thousands of years, Jessica wds all the Bene Gessent they would ever need, as she had fulfilled the prophecies These attitudes on the part of Paul and the Fremen hardly such as to incline them to ward the order, were reinforced by the Bene Gessent's support of the forces allied against the Fremen The Bene Gessent were faced with the prospect of their plans of the past uncounted centimes culminating in a person who was beyond their control, and it was more than they could bear Rather than have the Kwisatz Haderach live independently of them, they hoped to kill him and produce another With the help of the Bene Gessent, the forces of the Landsraad houses that had not yet been defeated met the Fremen legions in the svstem of Molitor The presence FREMEN LANGUAGE 234 FREMEN LANGUAGE of the Sardauiar on the side of the Landsraad made the battles a struggle, the Fedaykin made the battles a victory for the Fremen This was the greatest campaign in the Jihad but not the last Many systems remained unpacified, and even more remained outride the power of the burgeoning religion of Muad'Dib The Qizara Tafwid-the Fremen priesthood-regarded the Jihad as the means of spreading their religion, so that what had begun as a response to rebellion had become a vehicle of conversion One may be able to tell when rebellion ends, but who can say when all believe1' It is worth noting that most of the forty faiths eradicated by the Jihad perished after the campaign in the system of Mohtor The individual legions of Fremcn, moving independently through die galaxy, earned on the work of the Jihad long after Paul Muad Dib had returned to Arrakis By the time the last of the Fremen forces had returned to Arrakis, the wars over and the new Impenum begun, there was not a force left in the universe which could stand against the emperor's might The tensions and balances which characterized the relations between House Comno and the forces of the Landsraad were gone, never to return In their place had arisen the sole force of the Emperor Paul Muad'Dib, now the Mahdi for the human race, not just for the Fremen Where there had been many religions, now there was one, where there had been many armies, now only one mattered, where there had been a balance of powers between several social and political and economic institutions, DOW there was unity The Bene Gessent survived as an order, but not as a power The Spacing Guild survived, but only as a pawn of die emperor The Landsraad was a shell, and CHOAM was dominated by the new emperor to an extent that House Comno had never considered What had been the intricate, subtle interplay of forces in exquisite balance that had given the old Impenum life and meaning was gone FM FREMEH LANGUAGE.