Heretics of Dune Explained: Plot Summary and Ending

Heretics of Dune is the fifth Dune novel, published by Frank Herbert in 1984. It's set about 1,500 years after God Emperor of Dune, with a new cast and the Atreides gone except in their bloodlines. The Bene Gesserit carry the story now, caught between the Bene Tleilax and a new enemy coming back from the Scattering. This page covers the whole plot and the ending, with full spoilers. (Heretics of Dune)

Before the story begins#

At the end of God Emperor of Dune, Leto Atreides II died, the sandtrout from his body turned Arrakis back into desert, and the sandworms returned, each carrying a pearl of Leto's awareness. The planet is now called Rakis. A priesthood of the Divided God runs it and worships the worms as Leto. After Leto came the Famine Times, and then the Scattering, as billions of people fled into unmapped space in no-ships that prescience can't see. (God Emperor of Dune; Heretics of Dune)

Some of those people are now coming back, and they're not friendly. The old powers are also still here. The Bene Gesserit still breed and scheme. The Spacing Guild now has to compete with Ixian machines that can steer ships without a Navigator. And the Tleilaxu, despised by everyone, keep the secret of making spice in their axlotl tanks. (Heretics of Dune)

The ghola on Gammu#

Mother Superior Alma Mavis Taraza has bought a run of Duncan Idaho gholas from the Tleilaxu. Eleven have been killed. The twelfth is being raised in a Bene Gesserit keep on Gammu, the planet once called Giedi Prime. Taraza calls the retired Bashar Miles Teg back into service to train and guard him. Teg is old, an Atreides by blood, a Mentat and the most famous soldier in the Sisterhood's history. (Heretics of Dune)

The keep is a nest of rival sisters. Schwangyu, who runs it, wants the ghola dead. Taraza also sends the Imprinter Lucilla, whose job is to tie the boy to the Sisterhood through sex once his memories return. Nobody knows what the Tleilaxu built into him. Teg trains the boy anyway and grows fond of him. (Heretics of Dune)

Sheeana and the priests of Rakis#

On Rakis, Sheeana Brugh lost her family to a worm at the age of eight, walked out to meet it, and found it wouldn't touch her. She rode it into the city of Keen, and the priests took her in as a holy child. Taraza sends Darwi Odrade, a Reverend Mother of hidden Atreides blood and secretly Teg's daughter, to take charge of her. Odrade wins the girl's trust and starts to train her. (Heretics of Dune)

The priests both worship Sheeana and fear her. She is the closest thing they have to a living message from their god, and she doesn't much like them. Odrade sees what the Sisterhood could do with a child the worms obey, and what the Honored Matres or the Tleilaxu could do with her instead. Keeping Sheeana safe becomes as important to the Bene Gesserit as the ghola on Gammu. (Heretics of Dune)

The Tleilaxu have their own interest in Rakis. The Master Tylwyth Waff arrives, and the Bene Gesserit learn that the Tleilaxu have been spreading a document called the Atreides Manifest to stir up the old religion. Under pressure from the returning Honored Matres, Waff reaches an alliance with Taraza and Odrade, on the belief that the Sisterhood shares the Tleilaxu faith. Odrade and Sheeana also go into the desert and find a hidden chamber where Leto left a message and a store of spice. (Heretics of Dune)

The attack on the keep and the no-globe#

Schwangyu, who thinks the ghola too dangerous, lets the Tleilaxu and their allies from the Scattering attack the keep. It falls and Schwangyu is killed. Teg gets the ghola and Lucilla out and hides them in an old Harkonnen no-globe buried in the wilds, a sealed shelter that prescience can't see. There, Teg forces Duncan's original memories to the surface. The boy wakes up as the Duncan Idaho who served Paul Atreides, with the memories of many of the Duncans who served Leto. (Heretics of Dune)

The group splits. Teg is captured by the Honored Matres and put under a T-probe, a torture device that tears at the mind. The pain does something no one expected. His body learns to move faster than an eye can follow, and he can see no-ships, which no one should be able to see. He breaks loose and kills his way out. (Heretics of Dune)

Murbella#

Duncan and Lucilla, led by the agent Burzmali, try to reach safety through the city of Ysai. Duncan is taken by the Honored Matres and handed to Murbella, a young Honored Matre of rare skill, to be sexually enslaved. That is how her order breaks men. But the Tleilaxu built the same power into Duncan, and he turns it back on her. They end up bound to each other, neither in control. (Heretics of Dune)

Teg finds them, seizes a no-ship, and takes Duncan, Lucilla and Murbella, now a prisoner, to Rakis. (Heretics of Dune)

The burning of Rakis#

At Keen, Taraza meets the Tleilaxu and the priests. The Honored Matres come in force. Taraza is hit by lasgun fire. Odrade reaches her and shares with her, taking her memories into her own Other Memory before Taraza dies, which makes Odrade the new leader. Odrade and Sheeana flee into the desert on a worm. (Heretics of Dune)

Teg lands, picks up Odrade and Sheeana, and has the worm loaded into the no-ship. Then he sends the ship off and stays behind. He leads his soldiers in a final attack built to draw all the Honored Matres' rage onto himself. It works. In what becomes the Battle of Rakis, the Honored Matres kill Teg and turn the planet's surface to slag. Every worm on Rakis dies except the one in the no-ship. (Heretics of Dune)

The ending explained#

The book closes with Odrade as Mother Superior, a home world called Chapterhouse, one living sandworm, a worm-commanding girl, a Duncan Idaho with all his memories, and an Honored Matre prisoner who has started to wonder about her captors. The worm goes with them to Chapterhouse. (Heretics of Dune)

Herbert spends the book on the question of what the Bene Gesserit have become. They've kept themselves alive for thousands of years by caution and control, and the Honored Matres are what that kind of power looks like without restraint. Teg, who breaks the rules and acts on instinct, is the one who saves them. His death is a choice. He gives the Honored Matres a target so the people who matter get away. (Heretics of Dune)

The burning of Rakis also closes off Leto's world. Arrakis, the desert planet behind every Dune book so far, is gone. Its last worm and Leto's pearl inside it now depend on the Sisterhood, and on whether the worm can make Chapterhouse into a new desert. (Heretics of Dune; Chapterhouse: Dune)

Big questions stay open: where the Honored Matres came from, why they hate the Bene Gesserit and what they are running from, why the Tleilaxu gave Duncan the power to break an Honored Matre, and what Teg's new speed means for his bloodline. Herbert answers some of these in the next book and leaves others for good. For where this sits in the history, see the Dune timeline. (Heretics of Dune)

What it sets up#

Chapterhouse: Dune follows straight on, with the Honored Matres hunting the Sisterhood, Odrade gambling everything on one battle, and the Bene Gesserit growing a ghola of Miles Teg. The groundwork goes back through the earlier books: Leto's Golden Path is what scattered humanity in the first place, and the Atreides story runs from Dune through Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. (Chapterhouse: Dune)