Chapter 8: Build It Better

PORTIA WAS CORRECT in her assessment that Bao wanted my cock, which I gladly gave her until she screamed in ecstasy. Then I rolled to my left and, while Nimia kept Bao at a peak, I planted my pole in Portia and made love to my first princess. Yes, remember she was the daughter of a King in Knossos and was supposed to be married to King Drakomaxos until the sod got drunk and left her to be plundered by me. Bao never minded me satisfying my two Minoans as long as one was paying attention to her needs, which always seemed to be at a fever pitch. Occasionally, I had visions of Ninra having the same time with Namri and her two handmaidens. It was a share-and-share-alike arrangement.

When we were sated—for the moment—we shared our discoveries and approved each other’s plans. We set a time to meet with King to describe our intent.

“HOW MANY slaves is it going to take to build this new temple and canal?” King demanded. “I will need to take the army and raid the Orasines to get enough slaves to do the work.”

“No!” I bellowed. I suddenly felt the presence of the god and goddess descending on Bao and me. It was no longer I who spoke, and King quaked in front of me. “No slave will lift a brick for our temple,” Ninra said through me. “Hear what I say! The day ground is broken for the foundation of my temple, I will loose the water and fill the canals as they have never been filled before. The sheep will multiply. The grain will ripen. Famine shall be no more. And every laborer who lends his hand to the building of my temple will prosper.”

Bao took up the narrative—or Namri within her.

“No slave shall walk upon our sacred soil. We shall be worshiped by the free citizens of Bathra. Every laborer who sweats to build our temple shall not want for bread or meat but will prosper in our service.”

“Let this be decreed throughout the land: Our home shall be a home for the free citizens of Bathra. We call upon them to help in its building,” I concluded. I felt the presence of the god leave me and caught Bao as she sagged against me.

King turned to his scribes.

“Well? What are you waiting for? Publish this decree and let all the people rush to do the bidding of our gods!”

I FOUND it strange that no one seemed to miss the old wizard and I wondered if he really had an official position in the palace or with King. As I wandered through the halls exploring my new domicile one night...

Let me interrupt to say that it was not unusual for me to slip out in the middle of the night to get a little break from my voracious girls, or to slip into the infinity room with Nimia. Portia had taken to Bao with fanatic devotion and never went into the infinity room any more. Nimia, however, considered the room to be her home. She stayed there more and more and I never let her languish for lack of attention. Over the years, this arrangement would have unexpected consequences, but now, I was happy to have my wife in charge of my home in the infinity room.

Back to my wandering. I happened upon a door I had not opened before. I could see it had various protection and invisibility spells on it, cast by the old mage. Apparently, the spells were wearing off now that he was dead. I thought long and hard about how to open the door and finally, just pushed it in. The spells collapsed at my touch.

Inside, the room reminded me of Pinaruti’s magic room. Shelves of specimens, bottles of potions, a circle chalked on the floor. And scrolls! More scrolls than Pinaruti had. I quickly opened a gateway and called Nimia to me. We began emptying Assininé’s room, taking everything into the satchel where Nimia efficiently organized it. Nimia was the only person other than myself that I allowed in the replica of Pinaruti’s magic room. I considered her to be my first wife and head of my household in the satchel. We didn’t yet know what all the dried and bottled specimens were, nor how to use any of the potions, but I would have leisure to read and experiment once the temple was built.

In the meantime, Nimia organized and straightened and cataloged what she could, putting things with similar items on the shelves and not opening any bottles. She said the task made her feel closer to me, and in a way, she was right. I always carried my satchel or had it next to me. I had expanded the spells on the bag, so it was not visible to anyone unless I showed it to them. That gave me some amount of security when I entered the room myself.

THE DAY after King’s decree went out, we had a hundred volunteers at the new temple site, ready to do the bidding of the gods. Bao put some of the laborers to work extending the sewer ditch so it drained into a pit outside the city walls. I set some to extending the canal system so it would water the district. And the rest were set to relocating families in the way of the actual construction and making sure they had been justly compensated for the inconvenience. As soon as a hovel was emptied, it was torn down. The old sand and clay bricks went into a heap where they were pounded into dust. They would be reshaped into temple blocks, reinforced with fibers and magic.

Not everyone, of course, was a believer. There were those in the city who outright laughed at us, calling out how foolish we were to build canals where there was no water to feed them. Ninra in me wanted to strike them down and curse the town, but Namri in Bao had a way of settling the war god down—which usually included Bao and I having an energetic bout of sex.

I had discovered a secret of reinforcing the bricks with straw fibers, but also discovered the straw was weakened in the slurry for the bricks. I found, however, that the reeds growing in the river water produced strong fibers when they were pounded out and these did not deteriorate in the wet slurry. I sent a crew to harvest the ‘useless’ reeds by the river amidst more jeers from the skeptics.

I set myself to work making more of the molds for the blocks, carefully following the instructions of the god on how to enchant them so they would be stronger and longer-lasting. I trained a crew to pour the slurry and embed the fibers, but Ninra insisted that I be the only one who could enchant the bricks. As soon as I had chanted the spell, which I could do over dozens of brick molds at a time, the bricks were set out to dry—a process that did not take long in the hot sun. In a few days, we had quite a stockpile of bricks forming.

In a few weeks, the canal connection was completed and emptied into a vast pool in front of the temple site. It would empty. At the moment, it was dry, as the water level had not risen to fill the canals. That was my next task.

OVER TWO hundred laborers gathered around the temple square the day I decided it was time to begin the foundation for the temple itself. It was to be a day of great celebration—or a day of great folly. Many of the city skeptics were gathered with the workers to watch the crazy prince and princess pray to their gods. Bao and I held a shovel together as we prayed to the god and goddess so that everyone would hear us asking for their blessing on our work.

The people who had worked on the construction so far had been well cared for. Each family had been given a measure of grain and dried meat that was replenished as long as they continued to labor. They had nothing to want for and all seemed happy enough. But everyone wanted to see the blessing of the gods as it took place.

Bao and I set the spade to the earth and pressed with our feet to dig into the ground. We had staked out the foundation to be an armlength across and an armlength deep. This would then be filled in layers of the slurry and left to dry before adding the next layer. When the foundation was complete, it would be as if we had made a brick that encompassed the entire temple.

When we had broken ground, we heard a great thunderclap. Everyone’s eyes were drawn to the mountains opposite the river. There, a glorious display of lightning played along the ridges and the clouds lowered. As far as we were from the storm, we could feel a change in the temperature as rain stormed on the mountains and filled the streams. Those streams, in turn, filled the great river, raising it gradually to a height at which the canals began to fill. We didn’t get rain directly on our building site, so construction began in earnest.

This was a point at which I was kept very busy. Workers could and did dig the foundation trench, but for each pouring of slurry I had to chant the spell over it so it would last as long as the bricks themselves. The key element in this spell was to prevent damage to the bricks or foundation from either water or wind. Both were known to erode the common clay bricks used in constructing houses. In a span of days, the foundation was poured and cured.

And miracle of all, the canals were filled to a level never before seen in Bathra. Even our pool in front of the temple was filled.

This created some problems, as bridges had to be built so people could cross the canals. But it was not difficult. Water also washed into our sewer canal and the effluent was washed at last outside the city walls to the great pit awaiting it.

The skeptics were suddenly silent.

As construction continued, news began to come in from the surrounding countryside that crops were greening in the fields again. Sheep were breeding. Wool was thick. Meat was plentiful

And that is when King died.

HIS CHAMBERMAID reported that the king was looking out his window and saw the full canals and the happy people in the streets. He said simply, “I’m done now. The rest is up to Bao and Bob.” Then he went to bed and went to sleep. He did not wake up.

We had an official day of mourning for the king and no one worked that day. The next day, we had a coronation ceremony. No one worked that day. On the following day, everyone was surprised to find Bao and me back at the worksite preparing bricks and directing workers.