Scytale

Scytale is a Face Dancer of the Bene Tleilax and the Tleilaxu member of the conspiracy against Paul Atreides in Dune Messiah. He can take on anyone's face, and over the course of the novel he wears at least two that belonged to people he had killed. (Dune Messiah)

The conspiracy against Muad'Dib#

Scytale plots with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Guild Navigator Edric, whose own prescience hides their meetings from Paul's, and Princess Irulan Corrino, Paul's wife in name only. Twelve years into Paul's reign, they want to break his hold on the universe. (Dune Messiah)

Their weapon is a gift. Edric presents Paul with Hayt, a ghola grown by the Tleilaxu from the dead Duncan Idaho, Paul's old teacher and friend. The other conspirators hope the ghola will unsettle Paul and that taking a Tleilaxu creature into his household will cost him Fremen support. The Tleilaxu have a further aim: to prove they can bring back a ghola's original memories, so that they can offer Paul something he can't refuse when Chani dies. (Dune Messiah)

Farok, Lichna and the visit to Paul#

Dune Messiah tells this part in stages, and the order matters. (Dune Messiah)

1. Scytale visits Farok, an old Bashar of the Ninth Legion, in a suburb of Arrakeen built for veterans of the Jihad. The house next door belongs to Otheym, a former Fedaykin. (Dune Messiah)
2. With Farok are his son, blinded by a stone burner at Naraj, and Otheym's daughter Lichna. The son has addicted her to semuta to keep her, since no Fremen woman will take a blind man. (Dune Messiah)
3. Scytale kills Farok and his son with a dart, takes Farok's shape and leads Lichna away. (Dune Messiah)
4. Later Alia and Hayt examine the body of a young woman found in the desert: about twenty, Fremen, addicted to semuta. Nobody has been reported missing, and Hayt reads that as a sign that a Face Dancer has taken her place. (Dune Messiah)
5. Wearing Lichna's face, Scytale comes to Paul with a message: her father, Otheym, wants Paul to visit him in secret. Paul sees that she is a Face Dancer, but his visions tell him that exposing her leads to worse futures. When she asks to be taken into his household, he lets her in under guard. (Dune Messiah)

At Otheym's house Paul meets Otheym's wife Dhuri, an older version of the Lichna the Face Dancer had copied, and is given the Tleilaxu dwarf Bijaz, who carries the names of the Fremen traitors. A stone burner set off during the raid on the traitors blinds Paul soon after. Bijaz turns out to be a Tleilaxu agent himself, and he plants a compulsion in Hayt to kill Paul. (Dune Messiah)

The bargain over Chani#

Chani dies giving birth to twins, Leto II and Ghanima. Paul's grief sets off Hayt's conditioning, but the ghola's body fights it and Duncan Idaho's own memories come back, just as the Tleilaxu hoped. (Dune Messiah)

Scytale, still in Lichna's shape, then makes his move. He holds a knife over the newborn twins and offers Paul a ghola of Chani with her memories restored. The price is Paul's abdication and his CHOAM holdings, and the twins die if he refuses. Paul's prescience has failed and he is now completely blind, but he finds his son's view of the room, sees through Leto's eyes and kills Scytale with a thrown knife. (Dune Messiah)

The last Master#

The name comes back in Chapterhouse: Dune. There Scytale is a Tleilaxu Master, the last surviving one after the Honored Matres destroyed his people, held by the Bene Gesserit on Chapterhouse. He has traded them the Tleilaxu secret of growing gholas in return for their protection, and he's reminded that as the last Master he is now Mahai and Abdl, the top of the Tleilaxu order, all by himself. (Chapterhouse: Dune)

Hidden in his body he carries a nullentropy capsule holding the seed cells of fellow Masters, Face Dancers and others the Tleilaxu could grow again, Paul and Chani among them. At the end of the novel he is aboard the no-ship when Duncan Idaho, Sheeana and the Miles Teg ghola escape into unknown space. Readers often treat him as the Messiah Face Dancer's line continued through gholas. That's interpretation; Chapterhouse doesn't retell the events of Messiah. (Chapterhouse: Dune)