by K.N. Lee
What happened to that free-spirited girl who enjoyed frolicking through the woods without a scrap of clothing? I asked myself, sprinting across the room.
She became an old man with boy parts, I replied, responding to the soft fabric cinch around my waist. I resisted the urge to rearrange the draping shirt, uncertain if I wanted to enhance that mysterious bulge or hide it. The caressing fabric just enhanced things further. I sighed. Time to get the door.
“Sir Corbin answers his door in nothing but a shirt? This is new.” Maven sauntered into the room. Her purple dress had transformed into a blue negligee. She draped herself across the bed. “Invite me in for a cuppa wine, soldier?”
Parts of me turned towards the bed and the rest followed. It was like having a tiny arrow below my waist that kept pointing at everything. How can boys think with these things pulling, distracting, pointing? The arrow surged again. I untied my shirt and threw it aside as I surrendered and let my arrow lead me. What was the major difference really between one horn tugging from the outside and two curling horns tugging from the inside? There were certainly little differences (that stupid arrow surged for everything), but it wasn't an entirely unfamiliar pull.
“Are you going to wear that ring to bed?” Maven asked, her lower lip pouting.
“Is it . . . inappropriate?” I replied, curling my finger through the ring and running it up and down the chain.
“Horribly inappropriate.” Maven's voice grew deep and sultry. “Naughty, even.” She reached up, pulled me down to the bed, and strattled me. Then she shrugged out of her negligee like a ferret wriggling from a tunnel.
Her breasts has once been magnificent and a distant part of me was almost jealous. They had deflated with time to merely gorgeous and remained full and taunt. If I were as much a man inside as I was outside, her age and wrinkles would not diminish my desire.
I ran a finger across her skin and pinched a nipple, then caressed her breast like Tannis had caressed me that day in the woods. I suddenly wanted to know how he felt touching me. Her nipples flushed with a familiar tingling sensation and parts of me responded in spite of myself. I withdrew my hand.
“Why do you hesitate? Minerva is dead, Corbin.” Maven glanced over her shoulder and chuckled as she placed my hand back around her breast. “Go on, squeeze it. My sister isn't standing there in the corner. No voyeuristic ghost watching us make love. No more guilt. No more shame. Relax.”
My mind perked for a moment. There was a story here, a clue pointing towards . . . something. She felt around below my waist. The thought vanished. The arrow pointed harder. She wrapped her fingers around it and squeezed. “Well. Don't relax too much.”
I can count the number of boys I've enjoyed on the fingers of one hand. If I had to count the number I've turned away, explaining that my pleasure in my naked body is not an open invitation to pursue their own, I would have long since run out of my fingers and started chopping off theirs. But everything was switched now. I knew how this play went, and I remembered most of the lines, but in that moment the parts were switched. I was a horrible understudy.
Thankfully, Maven ran the show from atop me. I didn't have to do anything except push my hips and thrust up at the low point of her plunge.
She reached down and positioned me inside her. “Oh Corbin, let me impale myself on your lance.” The arrow surged again as she plunged down. It felt like sliding down a greasy pole except I was the pole. 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, 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. I never realized how much sex cheated boys.
The arrow twitched as though chiding me and she moaned, digging her fingers into my sides. Fine. Men. How much sex cheated men, I corrected, wrapping my legs around her waist. Maven startled. I unwrapped my legs. Old habits.
“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. Then she 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?”
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. “No, 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.
“No?” she asked, feeling my forehead. “But you never refuse sex, ya old goat. You're not sick, are you?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I'm stressed about the ceremony. Maybe I'm just getting old, feeling my age.” The arrow twitched again and she grinned. Quiet, you.
Maven quirked one eyebrow. “You, nervous? The Hero of Jerkum Pass feeling his age? Who are you and what have you done with the real Corbin Destrus?”
My heart stopped. Then she threw back her head and laughed.
5
CORBIN, YEAR 198
I dreamed of the mirror again that night. It was a vanity mirror set in a cozy wooden frame. 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. 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 cold and 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 . . . not. 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 mat of curly hair. I extinguished the lamp and fell back asleep. When I awoke, the sun streaming through my window heralded the dawn of a new day.
I made my way downstairs to the dining room, which was empty. Reserved for larger meals and banquets, I supposed. I ventured to the next room where everyone was eating breakfast near the bar, circulating much as they had when I arrived the last evening. However, the currents were sluggish this morning. Maven was sitting at the bar instead of he chair wearing a different purple dress, hands clasped around an old portrait. I grabbed some steaming foodstuffs from the buffet, a bracing cup of tea, and joined her.
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. I saw that face and those dark blonde tresses every morning when I combed my hair in the mirror.
At least I used to. I rubbed my grizzled jawline and snorted. But not in those clothes. One wore a blue mage's blouse, the other the red armor of a soldier . . . cavalryman . . . cavalrywom
an? The term cavalrywoman sounded odd to me. Did she have to bind her breasts to fit in 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.
“That takes me back,” I said. “Maven, the mage,” I pointed to the girl in blue, “and Minerva, the soldier.” I pointed to the girl in red. But they both looked like me. Maven used to look like me. My eyes narrowed as I re-examined the old woman sitting next to me. Would I look like that when I grew older? Other, more pertinent questions railed in my mind, but Corbin 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 and then clasped it shut.
I pushed the frame way.
“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 Warrior Dragons?”
I startled, almost breaking character. Maven was one of the warrior dragons . . . ? G'fa had regaled me with their exploits and said he was honored to know them. But they were just legendary companions from the stories. He never mentioned they were women. “The red and blue dragons,” I whispered. “Always first in battle, always last to retreat, tails and necks entwined, fire blazing. All fell before them. No enemy could shatter their sacred bond.”
“And no enemy ever did.” She patted my hand. “But a good friend can catch you unawares. Stab and twist the blade deeper than any foe. Because you let your guard down with a friend." She squeezed my fingers, crushing them in her grip. “Tragic, isn't it, Corbin, how camaraderie makes us vulnerable? Penetrates our strongest defenses?”
“Excruciating,” I agreed, wincing.
“We were twins, equal in every way, two sides of the same personality. Until one day we weren't. Do you think she could not sense the difference on the day you failed to protect her? The day she cast her life into the void? Died screaming in blood and pain? I've always wanted to ask her that. And you! Have you started believing your own fairytales? Don't you remember what really happened at Jerkum Pass? And afterward?”
“Of course,” I nodded. I may not have G'fa's memories, but I knew every story. It was becoming disturbingly easy to insert myself into the old man's narratives. “After we tracked him for many months through the maze of Jerkum Pass, an evil wizard had decimated all but three of the company: two soldiers and a mage. On the brink of death, we cornered him in a blind canyon for the final, epic battle.”
Maven nodded, rolling her hand. “Yes, and . . . ?”
“Everyone knows that story,” Drake said, coming behind us and clapping me on the shoulder. “After the weak, feminine dragons fell in combat, Corbin saved the day by strapping a mage-detector to his back and charging into the fray to protect his sweet pregnant lover and her horrible, useless mage of a sister. Every wretched spell the evil wizard cast was sucked into the great machine and Corbin defeated the bastard with cold steel. Your sister survived only to die in childbirth while you three made your way back home. In the end, he could not protect the army's fiery red flower with his steel,” he glared at Maven, “nor you with your magic.”
“Yes.” I tried to jerk my hand away from Maven's grasp as she turned to sear Drake with her eyes. “Everyone knows that story.” Everyone but me, damn it. In the version I had always heard, the red and blue dragon warriors were men . . . and they both died valiantly fighting the evil wizard to save Sir Corbin. Had I caught G'fa entrapped in another lie to spruce up his favorite stories?
“If you say so, Corbin." Maven sighed. She dropped my hand and brushed a single tear from her eye. “Time has a way of turning our favorite lies into half truths.”
Drake dragged me to the lonely end of the bar away from prying ears. “Ever thought of exchanging your red uniform for a black one? Attaining the rank you so richly deserve, Lieutenant? A rank to match your heroic exploits? I know you felt obligated to retire and care for Minerva's baby. The child of the Red Dragon and the Hero of Jerkum Pass? Who could argue with that? The kid was practically created in the bosom of the army. But, we lost two great soldiers that day. The child is grown. Your country needs you to serve again.”
“My country can piss on a dragon. I served faithfully. I went where the bureaucracy sent me and I killed whoever they wanted me to kill. And it cost me the love of my life. I'm out.”
“I need you, Corbin. Not some faceless bureaucracy. Me.”
“Rejoin the army?” I snorted and rapped my cheap costume of red fabric and tin. Would G'fa leap at the chance to play soldier? With these hips? No, he never played at anything. Besides, didn't he end every story glorifying army life with how he hung up his spurs early and never looked back? I turned to Drake and laughed. “As what, a showpiece?”
“Not exactly,” Drake replied. “We need teachers and leaders familiar with the mind of the enemy. You still have friends among the mages, Corbin. You were always . . . chummy with them. The empress isn't like her father. She's taking charge, establishing a new school at the Imperial Academy, a special service in charge of hunting domestic criminals. In particular, magic criminals. She's calling them the Black Guards.”
G'fa may have not wanted to return to the crimson cavalry, but his regimental pride never wavered. You were army from the moment you signed up until the day the horses tamped your grave. My eyes narrowed as something deep within the old man flinched and rose to the surface. “You mean calling 'us' the Black Guards. When did you abandon the army, Drake?”
The traitor clenched his fists. “The day the father of my empress died at the hands of mages. We gave those blue-bloused spell-flingers a place of honor at our side and they stabbed us in the back.”
“I heard that the emperor died of an illness,” I protested. “What evidence do you have mages did the deed?”
“I was here in the capitol. I heard the reports. There was not a single mark on him, Corbin: no wounds, no poison, no illness. The empress had her father's body examined by physicians and experts from across the land . . .”
“But no mages,” I asked, quirking my eyebrow, “to refute these accusations damning all mage kind? Or even explain the ethereal nature of the attack? Help defend against further attacks?”
“Help defend against further attacks? Are you insane? In the midst of a revolt fomented by rogue mages? This was their master stroke. And it cast a dark shadow over all magic users. They killed the emperor. The day the he died . . . well, there weren't as many of them in those days, but every mage-detector in the city announced his demise and shrieked in mourning. After that blast of foul sorcery, the emperor lay dead and my empress swore vengeance.”
“We have mages, blooded veterans, right here in the imperial army.” I gestured around the room. “Is the trust between mage and nonmage so fragile . . .?”
“The mages were either complicit in the crime itself or they failed to save the emperor from magic. We cannot afford to trust those people any longer.” Drake shook his head. “We have coddled the magic users in our midst for far too long. The time of sheltering mages in the army is past. Do you realize how close that revolt came to crushing our way of life while the damn army fought its foreign wars? The Black Guards shall pledge our lives to protecting the empire on the home front. Please, join us. You can help usher in a new era of peace, Corbin. What do you think?”
I think the G'fa I know would never betray his friends. “I think you're asking me to abandon all of my comrades who don't fit into this new era of yours by waving a filthy bribe under my nose. I'm left wondering what brand of shit those shiny major's pips you're offering me have been dipped in. The
whole thing stinks. You would pit one branch of the army against the other in the name of peace?”
“I would support the sovereign of our country to apprehend traitors and malcontents, Corbin.” He fished a pair of burnished steel major's pips from his pocket and placed them on the bar. He slid them over to me. “They're magnetized. Sticks right to your armor. It's the latest thing. The Black Guards are getting all the newest toys and gadgets. Here, try them on for size, eh Major?” Drake tried to affix the pips to my tin gorget, but they slid off the cheap costume and clinked on the bar.
I pushed them away. “What you're asking . . .”
Drake sighed and clasped my hand around the pips. “They'll fit once we wrap you in real plate steel armor again.”
“I'm too old to wear plate steel armor,” I shouted as he walked away. I pocketed the metal insignia and blushed as heads turned in my direction.
“You won't have any trouble wearing this stuff. Like I said: all the latest gadgets. Your country needs you, Corbin. Your true friends need you. Think on it.”
I glanced around the room. Nobody seemed to take any interest in our conversation until I had shouted. What was Drake thinking, revealing such things in the midst of the mages he was planning to betray and the cavalrymen whose service he had abandoned? Then I realized the cold truth. It didn't matter if anyone heard us. Drake didn't care. The faith he placed in the plans and person of his new empress were unshakeable. He was still wearing red armor, but his heart was already clad in black steel.
I returned to my room and spent the afternoon not thinking about mages and Drake's Black Guards, but my speech. Still had to finish the damn thing by tomorrow. The only mage I cared about saving was my daughter . . . mother . . . Miranda. I fondled the major's pips in my pocket. Would a shiny, new majordom help me save my family? Would helping to destroy the army betray the legacy of Sir Corbin Destrus? I got up and paced around the room. All the skull sweat was making the mark on my butt itch. I sat down with renewed focus on my writing. The itch disappeared, and I finally completed the speech. I spent the rest of a pleasant evening with a hot iron steaming and pressing every crease from my velvet cape. While my hands were occupied, my mind wandered. Thoughts of mages and old stories distracted me through dinner.