When the prisoner from Dellah was six years old, she had found a dead mouse under a tree. A human woman was picked up by Chris Cwej and Khiste on one of the planets near Dellah to use as the basis for the clones used in his employers treaty with the sphinxes. Before her capture, she was on "some kind of mission". When she was interrogated by Khiste, she revealed a "terrible truth" that Cwej's employers insisted was not to be passed on to anybody else. While it is unknown what had happened to the prisoner after the interrogation, Christine Summerfield speculated that she was tortured and then killed. (PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"])
Behind the Scenes
While the identity of the prisoner from Dellah is never made clear in the story, she is implied to be the absent protagonist of the series, Bernice Summerfield. In the previous story, The Mary-Sue Extrusion [+]Loading...["The Mary-Sue Extrusion (novel)"], Benny recounts how something had caused everyone on Dellah, herself included, to worship the All-High Gods. Fearing that she would soon be fully possessed by the Gods, Benny dosed herself with Mary-Sue to temporarily wipe her memory and replace it with a whole new persona. That way, she could retrieve her cat, Wolsey, without falling under their influence.