Chapter 6: Build Me a Temple

THE STORM immediately abated around the ship, but it was no better for me. A giant tentacle wrapped around my waist and squeezed until I could no longer breathe. I thought for an instant of how I could be killed and prepared for my return to the primordial mass. I whispered a little apology to my girls in the satchel and then the serpent flung me through the night sky.

It was my first encounter with one of Poseidon’s tentacled monsters of the sea, but sadly would prove not to be my last. I loved the sea, but its god and I never got along all that well.

I’m sure I was only airborne for a few seconds ... minutes at the most. But it seemed like I sailed through the air for days. I wished Pinaruti had thought to add wings to his image of me. Flying would be so cool.

Landing wasn’t.

I hit the sand at the water’s edge and just lay there gasping, still clutching my precious satchel. As I dried out in the sun, a weathered old man came up to me and nudged me with his foot to see if I was alive. I groaned.

“You look a mess,” he said. “What kind of creature are you?”

I looked down at my legs and hooves. I reflexively touched my horns. Apparently, my midnight flight had stripped my latest body from me. The old fisherman didn’t seem too concerned. Not the kind of response I’d expect, so I just went with it and told him honestly.

“I’m a demon. Sorry about the appearance. I usually try to clean up before I meet people.”

“Oh. I see. Yeah, this shore is one that will wash up all kinds of things. I’m Theodoglus. You can call me Doug. Nice to meet you, demon.”

“Bob,” I said, by way of introduction.

“Yep. Saw a mermaid here once, Bob. She was right nice when I helped her back to the water. Quite a handful. Two hands full, in fact. Oh, and that god with a three-pointed spear. He shows up every so often to go have a drink in the village. Anything in particular you’re looking for? Have anything to trade?” He sat in the sand beside me and broke off a piece of smoked fish to share with me. I noted he had a wineskin, too. After he saw me look at it, he offered some of that as well.

“I don’t understand what’s happening at all,” I moaned. “Some god has been pushing me to build somebody a palace, I think. It all comes to me in dreams. Just don’t hardly know what it all means.” I was picking up some of his vernacular in my mind speaking, just from sitting beside him.

“Dreams, huh. I know just what you need.” He looked away from me out toward the sea as he rubbed his fingers together. I tell you, the gesture for money is older than I am. At least I understood that. I reached down into my satchel and felt around until I found a bag of coins.

Feeling around in my satchel often involves feeling one of my women and I got a little distracted. Finally, however, Nimia understood my gesture and placed a bag of coins in my hand.

“I’m happy to pay for information. If you can tell me how to find out what my dreams mean, I’d gladly give you...” I looked in the bag and saw mostly pieces of sandstone. I dumped it out on the ground and sorted through it until I found a couple of actual metal disks. “ ... two silver Drakos. That seems to be all I have that’s real.”

“That’s enough for me to tell you, you need to go see Nansi. She’s about three days to the rising sun, next to the big river,” Doug said, still eyeing the sandstone coins. “If you could turn a couple of those into silver, I could get you a donkey to ride. I know it’s fool’s ore and it will turn back into sand eventually, but the wine I spend it on will have turned to piss by then, too. So, it ain’t my problem.”

What a cagey scoundrel. I wondered how many other magical creatures he had encountered who gave him fool’s ore. He seemed to know an awful lot about everything. Maybe he had met Poseidon. I worked the transmutation spell on a couple of the small disks and handed the silver coins to Doug.

“I don’t really need a donkey,” I said. “But a fresh wineskin and some food would be helpful. Maybe some clothes.”

“Well, you best stay out of sight while I go fetch it. Most people are afraid of the magical beings,” he said.

“But not you?”

“I’ve seen them all. Of course, nobody believes me. I’ll take a coin into the bar and get the wine. Somebody will look at it and say, ‘What did you see on the beach today?’ and I’ll say, ‘A demon with big horns and hooves for feet. Chest as thick as a tree trunk and eyes like burning coals.’ They’ll all just laugh and say, ‘Sure, Doug.’ But they’ll take the coin and give me the wine.”

“Sounds like a good schtick.”

“Just combing the beach to see what washes ashore.”

I STAYED out of sight. I couldn’t depend on people to be as friendly as Doug. He got me wine, smoked fish, some cheese, and even a flat loaf of bread. Once I hit the road in the direction he’d indicated, I worked a transfiguration spell on myself and picked up the look of one of the hardier sailors I’d worked with—young and well-muscled, but not so handsome as to attract unwanted attention.

I walked all day and all night before I felt I was far enough away to hide and spend some time in the satchel with my girls. Not too much time, mind you. I didn’t want this god-whoever-he-was to get angry and toss me into the sea again.

“So, all these things came from whoever this god is,” I said as we looked at the drawings, maps, molds, horse, chariot, and the lapis diagram.

“You must be doing well to have a god giving you all these gifts,” one of the statue girls said. “If you find a nice place to let me off, I’m ready for you to let me out of the bag. I love everyone here, but I want to see the world, not just be dragged through it in a bag.”

“I’ll do my best to find you a place. Where we are camped right now is not a good choice.” The girls all attacked and drained me.

Now, if you’ve never had five nubile young women attack your cock and make sure it is drained, let me tell you that when they are done, you are drained. I would have been happy to just cuddle up to Nimia and Portia—which is where I ended up—but statues one, two, and three were undoubtedly the kinkiest of all the women I’d collected in Knossos. Which is why they’d been statues. If there was a position they could bend their bodies into, or a hole to be filled, they wanted it. I wasn’t sure how they managed to get my cock into some of those places, but that didn’t stop me from coming.

In the morning, I emerged from my bag and continued the journey eastward.

IT’S NOT like there were blinking lights and big signs that said, “Nansi: Get your dreams read here!” But her house was obvious by the number of gifts and statuary outside. And the line of people waiting to see her. I hadn’t even thought about a gift for the seer. I reached in the bag and grabbed the first thing I found. It happened to be statue three. People were a little shocked to find a naked girl suddenly standing next to me. They gave me room and I quickly moved to the front of the line.

“I think this is your opportunity. I need to give a gift to the seer,” I said.

“Oh, cool! Maybe she’ll be pleased enough with me that she’ll teach me to interpret dreams, too. That would be such fun.”

“What is your name?” I hissed as we got to the door.

“Saris,” she whispered. “The one with the lovely tight asshole.”

I blushed as she said this just inside the door and just loud enough that I thought Nansi might hear her.

“I hope whatever dream you have brought me is worth the price of this lovely maiden with the tight asshole,” Nansi said upon greeting us. “You would not believe how many men bring me a dead chicken and the story of a wet dream, hoping I will tell him he is destined to marry the subject of his fantasy. I usually tell them to continue raising chickens, because they are far more successful at that. I don’t get many demons, though.”

I quickly felt my head and glanced at my feet to be sure my latest body was still intact. Nothing was showing through.

“I guess we don’t dream much under normal circumstance,” I muttered. “How could I dream something better than what I have in my hands? But these dreams seem to be wanting me to do something and I don’t understand what. Building a palace somewhere in the desert is the best I can come up with, but he shipwrecked me and threw me up on land so I’d come and find out what he’s talking about. It’s like we speak different languages.”

A WORD about languages. I was born or created or summoned with the Minoan dialect ingrained in me because it came straight from Pinaruti’s limited imagination. But I’d discovered in our trading ventures that people in other areas speak other languages. In fact, Doug didn’t speak the same language I did. I simply pulled his meaning from his mind and gave him my meaning the same way.

It’s a pain to learn all those languages, so most of the time I just kind of read minds and answered mind to mind. It didn’t work with the god. That’s why it was so frustrating with this god. It was like he could only communicate with words and I didn’t understand them.

A few centuries (millennia?) later, I finally learned English so I could write my memoirs. I like the language because if you don’t have a word for something, you just borrow one from a different language, or make it up on the spot. Remember my term omnimnemonic? I’m still proud of that one.

English was so much easier than German, where you can make up words, but the entire definition has to be contained in the word. I’d be Demoncarryinginfinityroomwanderingtheworld. See what I mean?

I didn’t have any difficulty communicating with Nansi, though. Her words seemed to carry the definition straight to my head and she had no trouble understanding anything I said as I described the sequence of dreams. I even pulled the lapis slate out of my bag to show her the plans.

“I SEE,” Nansi said after she’d examined the gifts and listened to my dreams, and let Saris get her robe open enough to get a hand on her bosom. “Ninra is tired of playing second tier war games and wants to establish himself as the patron of Bathra. Ninra is the golden god with wings and a storm for his body. He has two lions with him that will attack and destroy his enemies. The palace he wants built is a temple where people can worship him. The lapis slate has the temple plan; the maps show where it is to be situated. The brick mold is sacred and will be what you use to cast the bricks for his temple. I know you are used to working with stone, but there is only sand and clay where you will be going. The silver stylus was used to write the chants and spells you must use to bind the bricks together. The stallion is you, dear Bob. He has chosen you as the architect to build his temple. The tree and birds indicate he will not let you rest until you have begun his work.”