Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [27]
Sheeana knew he had at least one other important secret, a piece of incredibly vital knowledge. The witch could sense it! But Scytale had never been driven to the extremes necessary to reveal what he carried. Not yet.
As far as he knew, he was the only surviving original Master. The Lost Ones had betrayed his people, aligning themselves with the Honored Matres who obliterated one sacred Tleilaxu world after another. As he had escaped from Tleilax, he had seen the ferocious whores launch their attack on holy Bandalong itself. Just thinking of it brought tears to his eyes.
By default, am I now the Mahai, the Master of Masters?
Scytale had escaped the rampaging Honored Matres and demanded sanctuary among the Bene Gesserit on Chapterhouse. Oh, they had kept him safe, but the witches had been unwilling to negotiate with him unless he gave up his sacred secrets. All of them! Initially the Sisterhood had wanted Tleilaxu axlotl tanks to create their own gholas, and he had been forced to reveal the information to them. Within a year after the destruction of Rakis, they grew a ghola of Bashar Miles Teg. Next, the Mother Superior had pressured him to explain how to use the tanks to manufacture melange, and Scytale refused, considering it too great a concession.
Unfortunately, he had hoarded his special knowledge too well, holding on to his advantage for too long. By the time he chose to reveal the workings of the axlotl tanks, the Bene Gesserits had already found their own solution. They had brought back small sandworms, and spice was sure to follow. He had been stupid to negotiate with them! To trust them! That bargaining chip had become useless until the passengers aboard the Ithaca had needed spice.
Of all the secrets Scytale had within him, only the largest one remained, and even his dire need had not been great enough to reveal it. Until now.
Everything had changed. Everything.
Scytale looked down at the untouched remnants of his meal. Powindah food, unclean outsider food. They tried to disguise it so that he would eat, yet he always suspected that their cooking contained impure substances. He had no choice, however. Would the Prophet prefer him to starve rather than eat unacceptable food . . . especially now, since he was the last great Master? Scytale alone carried the future of his once-great people, the intricate knowledge of the language of God. His survival was more vital than ever.
He paced the perimeter of his private chambers, measuring the boundaries of his confinement one tiny footstep at a time. The silence weighed heavily on him. He knew exactly what he had to do. He would offer the last scraps of his dignity and his hidden knowledge in the process; he had to gain as much advantage as he could.
There wasn’t much time!
After a wave of dizziness passed, his stomach roiled, and he clutched his abdomen. Slumping back onto his cot, Scytale tried to drive away the pounding in his head and the twisting in his gut. He could feel the creeping death inside. The progressive bodily degeneration had taken root and was even now seeping through his body, winding through the tissues, the threads of muscle, the nerve fibers.
The Tleilaxu Masters never planned for an eventuality such as this. Scytale and the other Masters had survived numerous serial lifetimes. Their bodies died, but each time they were restored, their memories awakened in ghola after ghola after ghola. A new copy was always growing in a tank, ready for whenever it might be needed.
As genetic wizards, the great Tleilaxu created their own path from one physical body to the next. Their schemes had continued for so many millennia that the Masters let themselves become complacent. Proud and blind, they had not considered the depths into which Fate might hurl them.
Now the Tleilaxu worlds were overrun, the laboratories ransacked, all the gholas of the Masters destroyed. No reincarnation of Scytale waited in the wings. He had nowhere to turn.
And now he was dying.
In creating one ghola after another, the Tleilaxu Masters