All her life, tamers forced their consciousness within her. Before, they were like the flowing waters, some small enough that she could stand on the shore and let them pass under her like little puddles and others, like Makhun, that pushed themselves where they would. Still, Tuya retained the ability to direct their flow away from her most hidden secrets or to swim beside them, keeping her own consciousness afloat and distinct. With Gurgaldai, Tuya was plunged beneath the evil water and there was neither land nor surface in sight. In the depths of her own consciousness, in these dark recesses submersed far below the flow, she found Gurgaldai, and did not know where her mind ended and his began.
The immersion with the mind of another was beautiful, not unlike the evil water itself when the lightmaker woke from sleep, and yet it was every bit as dangerous as being lost in that vast, murderous water. She could not escape from him nor did she even know which way to go. It was all Tuya could do not to drown in his consciousness.
Gurgaldai flooded through her memories, starting from the nearest past and delving deeper. He saw her obeying Makhun and pretending to be dead. He will never hurt you again, Gurgaldai promised. Tuya fought to retain her own mind, too inundated to grasp the meaning of Gurgaldai’s thought. He flashed through her life, grasping significant memories. Tuya held the bloody log, crying as she swung it down upon Sarnai. She submitted to Makhun’s control, refusing to push back at him with her strength. She tended the numbroots in the dark place, blessing them with strength as her eyes created light in the darkness and saw all. Gurgaldai’s joy radiated through her, smothering every other feeling like oversized furs that she could not crawl out of. You are Lifegiver and Lightmaker.
He did not stop there, but dug ever deeper, mining her memories to know all that was Tuya of the Hollows. Gurgaldai passed through the seasons of her life, seeking to understand her and prove, over and over to himself, that she was worthy. He marveled at her interactions with the other khorota. Embraces with many girls like Khula where she let them know that at least one person cared about them, using paintakers and numbroot among the other herbs found in the Hollows to make pain smaller, taking credit for the crack in a weird rock when another woman failed to deliver good water to her tamer, gathering enough food to feed handfuls of women when their tamers were stingy with their supply, and on and on.
Gurgaldai surveyed her deeds with a childlike confusion and wonder. He could not comprehend one helping others, trying to make pain smaller, and doing so at great risk to their own safety, without any gain for themselves. At first, he assumed she did it to gain their devotion, or to manipulate them into doing her bidding. He condemned her approach as inefficient compared to domination. Alas, when he saw that Tuya continued to make pain smaller even when it was clear that most of the women she helped never reciprocated nor did she command their loyalty, he sought her truth. Why do you help them when they do not help you? Why do you risk yourself for them?
For love. Tuya shared her understanding of the word with him, remembering her conversation in the rain all those seasons ago with Sarnai.
The concept struck Gurgaldai as if Tuya smashed him with Aldar. He withheld his thoughts, a few drops of sorrow leaking through his dammed flow. Then, his admiration of Tuya emerged from the dam. You are brave and good. Where I must break, you may mend. Where I must be feared, you can be … loved? This pleased the Great Ezen, but it did not appease him. Onward he went, plunging through her psyche.
Gurgaldai became privy to her hidden resistance against the tamers. Memory after memory, many nearly forgotten, were drawn together, creating the story of how one with her phenomenal strength managed to hide herself right beneath the Spire without being detected. Yes, the tamers knew of her eyes, at least partially of the magic they harnessed. Yes, sometimes she failed and often she was beaten or battered by proxy, but always she endured, she found her way back to hope. She never gave in.
Just like me, he thought. He admired her resilience, grew infatuated with her ability to continue to find the light in the darkness, to continue to give life even after so much had been taken from her, to let love guide her instead of hatred. With astonishment, he witnessed as she freed countless tamed from his minions. For seasons, she shattered tamer links, sharpening her skills right beneath his nose, and Tugal’s before him, without picking up her scent.
Very few of those tamers admitted losing to a khorota, he explained. Those that I pried the truth from did not speak of a beautiful unblooded child unlike any other, but of a horrid, evil monstrosity of a woman with claws like a yasmar and fangs like the lion head of the chimaera. You are more than I hoped for and I everything I will need.
Zaya’s warning came unbidden to Tuya. You must never let the tamers know how well you hear the wild, Tuya.
I will not hurt you. Gurgaldai’s sincerity flowed through their link, but Tuya resisted it, a short lifetime of needing to hide to stay alive refusing to relent to the most dangerous tamer alive.
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Somewhere outside this vast sea of consciousness, strong arms embraced her body as his mind enveloped her with respect. You are special. You are worthy. You are my only equal. We were created by Celegana, two sides of her divine power, made to reforge the world in her honor. Together. Tuya, you are my Chosen.
Tuya resisted the idea of being better than the countless others who suffered the same as her. She would not see the world and the people that lived in it the way the tamers did. She would not measure a person’s worth by how mighty they were, either in body or in the strength of her consciousness. Sarnai could barely form a link with Tuya, her eyes could not see in the dark, nor could she give strength to the flowers, but she was of no less value than her, no less strong than her, no less deserving of love and freedom. All of these women were worthy. In that, Tuya did not lie.
Gurgaldai persisted in his insistence that Tuya was unlike any other and she insisted in her persistence that she was exactly like every other.
Tuya lowered her walls, released all her self-imposed restrictions to stay hidden, and repelled the tamer’s consciousness. She was a tempest of love and light, a hurricane of hope assaulting Celegana’s Spire, a solitary voice that spoke for the many who were silenced and she demanded her freedom. Gurgaldai did not brace himself for her rebellion, nor could his mind withstand her onslaught.
Tuya opened her eyes to find the Ezen trembling, sensing his intertwined excitement and anxiety mirroring her own like a reflection in the good water. These feelings were mirrors of themselves, opposite reactions of the same sensation, one edging one forth and the other urging caution. Tuya saw him, simultaneously both the most beautiful and the ugliest creature she ever laid eyes on, and ever would. She wanted to hold him, to love him, and she wanted to break him, to hate him.
“My Chosen,” he said, kneeling in front of her and offering her his hand.
Tuya twined her fingers between his, regretting and rejoicing the contact. She gazed into his eyes, seeing a boy unlike any other and exactly like every other. If she were to be claimed as his Chosen, she would determine whether she could choose to love him. She braved a deed she never imagined in all her dreams; she placed her hand on the back of his neck and pressed her head against his. Feeling his breath quicken on her face, seeing nothing but his eyes, Tuya reached out to him with her strength.
He hesitated. Tuya’s strength was unlike the tamers. She could not force her way into another’s mind, but only be let in. “Let me see your truth,” she said.
Gurgaldai exhaled. “I will never lie to you, Tuya.” He closed his eyes and their minds merged again, this time Tuya the visitor and him the host.
Waves of awareness splashed Tuya and drenched Gurgaldai in his repressed truth. Beneath the surface, he harbored immense sorrow. She drank in his laments, spat out the lies that obfuscated them, and found the source of his pain. There was a hole within this man’s spirit where love ought to reside. Always feared, never trusted. Always hated, never loved. Nobody loved him, nobody ever had, and he feared, like any other, that none ever would. In all his seasons, only one person ever reached out to him and tried to make his pain smaller. He longed to have her fill this void, but doubted he had the capacity to feel love for another the way he wanted her to love him. To him, every person, Tuya most of all, was a tool to be used to claim the world and fulfill Celegana’s prophecy. His truth was like the weapon that defined his life: the crushing blow that he would never be loved and the piercing cut that he could never love.
His thoughts flowed through to her as she witnessed tears form a layer of mist in those most beautiful of eyes. Gurgaldai ezen Celegan, master of the Celegan Empire, would-be conqueror of every nation on the grand landmass known as Vesarra, and fated father of the Son of the Conqueror and the Queen, gazed upon the only person in that world he would ever believe equal to him. She who could hear the voices as well as him. She who could quiet the voices of the tamed. She who had succeeded in breaking his binding link. As he looked upon this small, but unfathomably strong girl, he knew that she was the only one he would ever trust to be the queen to his conqueror. If anyone could ever fix the broken parts inside of him and make him love, if anyone could ever be capable of loving him, it was her.
Gurgaldai closed the link.
Feared by all and loved by none, he relinquished his touch on her and retrieved Aldar, no sign of the sorrow he hid within showing on the Great Ezen’s mighty face. He pointed Aldar at her, extending it one-handed in another display of power. “This one is my Chosen! Bring her to me by the sunset of her first blood. Any who harm her, who think to keep her, or hide her from me will meet an end far worse than Tamer Jhorgal.” He stepped toward the tamers, raising the abomination over his head. Each one cowered and flinched. Gurgaldai destroyed the ground at Makhun’s feet, the shockwave causing cracks to appear like spiderwebs growing from where Aldar struck the land. Makhun whimpered and covered his head. “You will beg and squeal like Tamer Jhorgal as the big lightmaker and the seasons cycle and yet you remain alive! You will wish it were a yasmar tending your fate and not Gurgaldai ezen Celegan!” He lifted Makhun off the ground with a one-handed grip around his neck. “She and I are linked. If you disobey me, I will know.”
“I will obey,” Makhun squealed.
Gurgaldai threw him at the nearest hollow. The tree reverberated and Makhun crumpled to the ground. “You will.” He held Aldar out and spun to face each tamer. “You all will. She is mine.” He gazed at Tuya, the anger on his face evaporating like morning mist. In its place, arose the most beautiful, yet dangerous, smile. “My Chosen.”
The tamers and khorota, all except for Tuya, fell to the ground and kissed Celegana’s land as Gurgaldai ezen Celegan left them behind. Even then, Tuya wondered why Gurgaldai chose to leave her in the Hollows. To that question, she could find no truth, but only surmise that Gurgaldai ezen Celegan, the tamer determined to claim the world, acted with his feelings and not his wiser thoughts. For Tuya, her wiser thoughts realized that his emotional lapse gave her the opportunity to fly away to the faraway lands, if only she could overcome the feelings that bound her to this place.