72 pages 2 hours read

Frank Herbert

God Emperor of Dune

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1981

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Chapter 41-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 41 Summary

In an epigraph from The Stolen Journal, Leto states that all systems, including language, contain the ideology of their creators, and to accept a system wholly and without examination is to resist change.

On the third night of Siona’s test, Leto reminds her to conserve the water in her breath, and she finally seals the mouthflap of her stillsuit. However, by the fifth day, she is near death. Leto does not force her to bargain for her life. Instead, he asks her to willingly join his forces and command the Fish Speakers. Siona swears her hatred for him and agrees to nothing. She chooses to drink the only water they have—the spice-essence that induces prescient visions. Siona knows that the liquid may keep her alive, or its potency may kill her. She drinks the liquid that Leto excretes from flaps by his face and climbs into the hammock of his folds. As he rocks her through the agony, Siona experiences the convulsive horror of “seeking machines” (483) that hunt humans to extinction.

Siona confirms that she now vividly feels the Golden Path and recalls how the people in her vision had nowhere to hide. Leto probes the immediate future and sees by her tracks in the sand that Siona, like a true Fremen, makes it out alive from the desert.