Let you! my mind shrieked. I gasped, but did not trust myself to speak as the arrow surged again. Maven maneuvered the arrow with one hand and slowly plunged down, her muscles tightening and enveloping me. It felt like someone had wrapped themselves around a greased pole and was sliding down the entire vibrating length of it.
I relished my time as the greased pole rather than the one sliding down it, but couldn't help comparing the two sensations. Something must have shown in my expression, because Maven patted my chest and laughed. “Stop it. Enjoy yourself!”
Her warm muscles still wrapped around the length of the pole, she gave it a firm squeeze. My thoughts edged away. Then, Maven lifted her hips, draping herself across the tip of my arrow as it began to slide free. With another wicked smile, she braced her hands against the headboard and impaled herself again, slowly, muscles still taut as she pushed me deep inside. My thoughts fled.
Maven ran the show from atop me from the first parting of the curtains to when they closed for the final time. I was her willing prop. I didn't have to do anything except push my hips and thrust up at the low point of her plunge.
She plunged again and again. At first, I struggled to match the rhythm of her hips. Then I exceeded it, thrusting at a faster temp, a sliding counterpoint to her own. She moaned and sped her motions to match mine. We continued in a rising climb of sliding bodies and slick sweat, passing one another on the trail to ecstasy.
Then, the journey was over. So quickly. I lay there, stunned. I was used to a long, luxurious hike leading to dancing across a row of ascending mountain peaks, each exploding into a raging volcano as I touched from one to the next. But now, I was dismayed to find myself sprinting up a lonely mountain side. With one tiny eruption, it was over. No more peaks. We both stopped thrusting and she collapsed across my chest. I never realized how much sex cheated boys.
The arrow twitched as though chiding me and she moaned again, digging her fingers into my sides. Not boys, men. I never knew how much sex cheated men, I thought, wrapping my legs around her waist. Maven startled. I unwrapped my legs and bit my lip. Old habits.
While I was feeling distinctly underwhelmed by the whole experience, Maven was grinning and flushed. In that moment, I envied her. Then, my quick surge of envy shriveled to a small, dangling knot of pity. How mediocre was her sex life before tonight that this quick romp excited the poor woman?
“Corbin, that was . . . wow. When did you learn that? Where did you . . . ?” We laid next to each other, panting. Maven propped her head on my shoulder and curled my chest hair around her fingers, but avoided touching the ring. She grinned and slapped my hips. “Hmmm, what else have you learned since we last saw one another? I want to see that butt in action. Ready to get on top, charger?”
I suppressed a sigh. I knew what to do in the abstract, but not from this angle, not trapped within this clumsy male body. Take a leading role? Understudy, nothing. I had forgotten the play altogether. The role was still too new, too virginal. Sex hadn't felt this awkward in years.
“I can't,” I replied, coughing as my heart settled from a roar to a quiet purr. “Maybe . . . tomorrow?” Once I've had time to study my new role. I wasn't ready! I could do better!
“No?” she asked, patting the mattress with inviting, little slaps. “But you never refuse sex, ya old goat. You're not sick, are you? ”
Then, you refuse my invitation after dinner. Refuse it! Old Hollow Leg Corbin, passing up drinks. What's the great mystery, eh? Drake's words echoed in my mind. I would have to be careful here.
Maven's breasts swayed as she reached to lay a hand on my forehead with a mocking laugh. Exchanging banter with Drake had hardly prepared me for this. I could no longer hide behind a bottle of alcohol or masculine camaraderie. This threatened to become . . . no, the topic had already thrust into an intimate discussion. Now I was caught between two closing walls. I could hardly maintain the allusion as her lover if she started reminiscing about our past bedroom exploits, nor could I physically take charge as her memories demanded I should. Would Maven clench the walls tight or allow me to slide out of this conversation?
“I'm stressed about the ceremony. And all the traveling has made me weary. Maybe I'm just getting old.” The arrow twitched again as if to dispute that and she grinned. Quiet, you.
“What's this? Sir Corbin, taking shelter behind weak excuses?” Maven asked in hushed, sultry tones as she ran her fingers across my chest. “You were always so eager to charge lance first. What happened?”
“Oh, I've picked up a few more tricks over the years. You will have to wait and see,” I murmured, blushing. “I . . . really am quite exhausted. I can do better.”
“I believe you.” My lover caressed my open palm with a light, delicate touch, leaned down, and traced her fingers across my neck. I shivered. There was a promise waiting to be filled with that caress.
I took her hand and smiled. I kissed each of her fingers .
Surely, the passage of the years was enough to account for any discrepancies between my love making and her memories of a younger man? I will warm up to my role for the next time we performed this little play. When my lover wants me to take the lead, and next time she shall both expect and demand it of the virile knight she used to know, I will be ready.
Maven quirked one eyebrow and pulled her hand away. She slapped my chest. “The Hero of Jerkum Pass feeling his age? Staining those leathery cheeks with a rosy hue? Who are you and what have you done with the real Corbin Destrus?”
My heart stopped. She threw back her head and laughed.
7. CORBIN, YEAR 198
I dreamed of the mirror again that night. It was a vanity mirror set in a wooden frame, but I could only see the frame by squinting and crossing my eyes. I ran my right hand through my hair and down the length of my body. I had long tresses, full breasts, and a vagina again. But they were all indistinct, like a blurred vision seen from the corner of your eye. I tried to tilt my head to see my face in the mirror, but everything was murky.
I noticed the temperature difference and shivered. My right half had a burning warmth. My left half felt cold and . . . under water?
A burning line extended between my eyes and breasts, splitting my nose, belly button, and crotch. I was half submerged within the world of the mirror and half without. The only constant between both worlds was an icy chill seeping into my butt. I was half sitting on something hard. My right eye saw the edge of the mirror's frame and blurry details beyond. My left half was sinking, I think. My left and right halves were shearing apart.
My left eye was squeezed shut, submerged beneath molten glass. My left arm moved like swimming through treacle. My left foot was . . . stuck in something. I had to open my eye. It burned, but only for a moment. I looked down. Dirt. My foot was submerged in dirt. A rock? Was I sitting on a rock? The top was rounded and the surface I could see between my legs was flat. My halves continued to split. I could feel my right butt cheek sitting on top of the rock while the left slid down and pressed against the face of it. There was writing shimmering on the rock. A tombstone, I realized. 'Here lies Corbin Destrus.'
A skeletal hand burst from the dirt, grabbed my ankle, and pulled my left half underground. The right half sat and watched, drumming her heel on the tombstone.
I awoke, gasping. The ring was a cold lump on my chest. My hair was short cropped again, breasts insignificant, and vagina nonexistent. My left foot twitched. I could still feel the skeleton fingers pressing into my flesh. I fumbled and lit the oil lamp by the bed, checking for red marks on my ankle. No marks, just a thick mat of curly hair. I extinguished the lamp and fell back into a dreamless slumber. When I awoke, the sun streaming through my window heralded the dawn of a new day.
I made my way downstairs to the high-ceiling dining room, which was dark and quiet without the chandeliers and crowds to light up the place. Reserved for larger meals and banquets, I supposed. I ventured to the next room where everyone was eating breakfast near the bar after visiting a
large buffet table at one end of the room, circulating much as they had when I arrived last evening.
I swam through the little eddies of conversation, wading toward the buffet. Most people were discussing the new empress. Everyone had a slightly bedraggled look, mussed hair, and the currents were sluggish this morning. I ran a finger through my own frizzled locks and smiled. Odd how the simple migration of hair from my head to my chest was sometimes the strangest thing of this whole transformation. I glanced around the room for a familiar face, skipping those I recognized from last night until one particular person floated into view.
Ah, Maven. My crotch suddenly pointed at the woman of its own accord like a lodestone orienting toward iron. I resisted the urge to slap it down. I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. Perhaps the difference in body hair wasn't the strangest thing after all. The five gods curse this body!
Maven sat at the bar instead of her chair, wearing a different purple dress and a matching wide-brimmed hat with a small, cream-colored plume.
It's a puffy, white feather , I insisted as I walked across the room toward the buffet table. Men do not talk about cream-colored plumes. As I passed near her—the arrow below my waist insisting that we go to her now, immediately—I saw that Maven was cradling something cupped in her hands. I squashed my thoughts and continued to the table loaded with assorted beverages and tiny delicacies made of pastry and cheese. I grabbed some steaming foodstuffs and poured myself a bracing cup of tea. I focused on her as I sipped my tea and made my way through the crowd. I was attracting a few glances by now from the crowd, but most parted to let me pass.
The magnetic pulling sensation intensified. What had begun as a small, burning tinder in my loins was spreading, fueled by something stirring deep within me. I attempted to find refuge in the details: the way the dress draped around her shoulders, how her hair framed her face, the fluttering of the plume, and the crisp aroma of dark, fresh-brewed Dragon Blend tea. Warm, wet tea. The blaze grew into a spreading wildfire.
I rubbed against the lining of my trousers, the awkwardness growing with each fresh step. I buried my nose in the steamy smells rising from tea cup, which in no way resembled the fragrant, earthen musk of a hot, sweaty body . . .
I bit my lip to keep from screaming. I hurried to find a stranger in the crowd with his back to me, someone who would not step aside. I jostled against the man, spilling a portion of my hot tea down the front of my trousers. Then I did scream and doused that raging inferno.
The stranger turned with unruffled ease, bowing slightly. “Forgive me, Sir Corbin.”
I blinked as the man's mewling tones nicked my memory. My 'stranger' was Sir Nortus. The pain faded quickly. I yawned as a sudden numb weariness replaced the searing fire. I glanced at The Mouse. What to say? I yawned again and smiled to myself. I waved him away and made a show of gingerly dabbing my crotch with a cloth napkin. “The fault is mine, Sir Nortus. Not quite awake, I fear.”
Nortus glanced over my shoulder at the people in my wake then turned and followed the trajectory of my path. He grinned as he turned to face Maven. “Late nights will be the death of us all. I suppose there are worse ways to enter the Black Tower.” He looked at my half-empty tea cup and with a glance to obtain my permission, bent down, sniffing the aroma. “A rare, fiery blend, aged to perfection to produce the perfect mature balance of flavors. Almost like dragon rum.” His nose twitched.
“No doubt you can smell that, too. I need to launder these clothes,” I said, startled. This is the most sober man in the army? “I had no idea you were so well acquainted with teas and fine spirits. You are a true connoisseur of beverages, sir.”
I felt guilty for rebuffing him at dinner the other night and lavished praise with a thick brush. He blushed and sputtered, but there was something strange about his eyes. There is much you don't know about me, they seemed to say.
“Sir Drake is the real expert. He has been kind enough to take me under his tutelage these last few days. I am learning . . . many things.” Nortus stared at the conspicuous dark stain on my trousers. “I regret not joining those nightly repasts at the kitchen table when the committee visited your house.”
I nodded slowly. Several of the welcoming committee members had continued the hallowed tradition of drinking and carousing late into the night, but never Sir Nortus.
“We missed your company,” I said for lack of anything better to say.
“Did you?” Something dark flashed across his face. In a moment, he was smiling again, and I half convinced myself I had imagined it. “Tell me, did any of your family members ever join you for a mug of beer or hard cider? Not enough room around that tiny table, I expect, for anyone other than your closest old army buddies.”
“No,” I admitted. “I kept the family away. Such ears were not meant to hear the morose old tales of a gaggle of drunken soldiers. You would have been welcome, though.” I gazed into the man's flickering eyes. “I swear it by the five gods. I would have poured your mug myself.”
His eyes widened. His lips quirked with the hint of a grateful smile. “Aha. Thank you for that.”
“I wonder what fascinating stories you would have shared?”
“I suppose we shall never know. Pity.” Nortus lowered his head and turned away. “Perhaps the Blue Dragon Warrior will freshen your cup for you.”
“Never!” I sniffed. “She's more a woman of wine than a trollop of tea.”
Nortus chortled, looking up and grinning in a companionable way. He nodded farewell as men are wont to do and slapped me on the back as he passed.
The dregs of my tea sloshed and some food slipped off my plate. I sighed and pushed back into the crowd. The Mouse was stronger than he looked. My shoulders stung. The ceremonial armor was worse than useless: it amplified the most casual touches. What was it about men and back-slapping humor? And since when was Sir Nortus so familiar—I whipped around to confront the man, but he had vanished into the throng of people.
Maven looked up from the object nestled in her hands and smiled when I arrived. I eased my weary body onto the stool next to hers—no, I claimed it, I took the thing for my own— grabbing the seat and mounting it. I sighed, tugging at my trousers as certain parts resisted the stool's conquest.
I glanced over Maven's shoulder, past the brim of her hat to the object in her hands. It was a tiny pair of small framed portraits opened like a small book.
She tilted the portrait for my inspection, the split image mounted in two lacquered, wooden frames joined by a central hinge. Two young women posed on a rock jutting from a field, one in each frame. Lost in time, they looked back at me as their arms reached across the divide, hands clasped. The young women staring across the years both looked hauntingly familiar.
No, a small corner of my mind whispered. I saw a face and dark blonde hair like that every morning when I combed my long tresses in the mirror. At least I used to . . . I think? I closed my eyes and tried to remember the person from my dream. There was a mirror? And a tombstone? But her face. I could not remember her face. A tiny barb of doubt pierced my gut as I pushed my fingers through my thin, scraggly hair.
I rubbed my square jawline and snorted. Kelsa certainly never wore such clothes! One wore a blue mage's blouse, the other the red armor of a soldier . . . cavalryman . . . cavalrywoman? The term cavalrywoman sounded odd to me. Did she have to bind her breasts to fit into that cuirass? A glint of gold caught my eye. Both women wore rings suspended on a chain around their necks, displaying their jewelery against the red and blue fabric as though adding some commonality to their different uniforms. Such strange, familiar faces with their strange, familiar rings.
Miranda's warning echoed through my mind. Don't forget who you are.
I shook my head, berating myself. There's still a young woman underneath all this somewhere. But she's imagining things. They're just plain golden rings on two young women. The hair and the face match a little . . . maybe. I reached up, touched one grizzled cheek, and laughed quietly, ber
ating myself.
You've been pretending to be Sir Corbin for too long. Kelsa's mind and body are becoming nothing more than a dream. Only her voice remains. Would you even recognize her face . . . my face . . . if you saw it in a painting?
I squinted at the portraits again. They looked so similar to each other. I may not remember the faces of these two women, but I knew them. I had heard all the stories of the two dragon warriors. I paused. No, I knew all the stories. At least, I thought I had. The longer I stayed in this body, the more everything I knew kept changing. I glanced at the two rings shining in each portrait. Another story I'd never heard, apparently. None of the tales I remembered had ever mentioned a pair of matching rings.
“That takes me back,” I said, nodding. “Maven, the mage,” I pointed to the girl in blue, “and Minerva, the soldier.” I pointed to the girl in red. But I could not shake the feeling that they both looked strangely like Kelsa. Surely not. You old fool. You can't even remember your own granddaughter's face? Disgraceful!
My eyes narrowed as I re-examined the old woman sitting next to me. The link between the young woman in the dark blue mage's clothes and the old woman in the light purple dress was unmistakable. Other, more pertinent questions railed in my mind, but I suppressed them as Maven's face pinched and both eyebrows shot for her hairline .
“No.” She looked at me oddly. “Have your eyes started to fade along with your brain? We swapped uniforms that day for a lark, remember? Look closer, old fool.” She shoved the picture in my face.
No fool like an old fool, my mind whispered.
I pushed the frame aside and looked away. Something about those two girls still tugged at the back of my mind.
Maven sighed and clasped the portrait shut. “Do you know why I wear purple, Corbin? To honor the memory of my sister. To remind everyone that mages and soldiers once cooperated in perfect harmony, two halves of the same whole. You remember what they used to call us all those years ago? The best mage paired with the best soldier in the army? The dragon warriors?”
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