Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

only five repeating constellations on the board, and a bunch of single stars on the other blocks. The single stars are the pawns, and the constellations are the five major pieces used in chess: knight, bishop, castle, queen, king.”

His eyebrows lifted. “We learned at the museum that chess was invented in India.”

She gripped his arm. “The arrangement isn’t uniform, like at the start of a game, so it must represent the middle of one.”

“And we’re supposed to finish it? What’s the object of chess again?” He answered his own question with raised eyebrows. “To kill the king.”

“Let’s think about this. Leo the lion is obviously the king of the jungle, and Cassiopeia was a queen of Aethiopia.”

“Centaurs kind of look like knights,” Cal added.

“That’s my guess as well. Sagittarius is a centaur archer, and his diagonal arrow makes me think of the way a bishop moves. I’m going with that.”

“Which piece does that leave? The castle?”

“Yep. I don’t understand that one . . . Corvus . . .” She snapped her fingers. “A castle is also called a rook, and a rook is a bird—not just a bird, but a crow. Corvus fits!”

“Okay. Then we’re on the right track. So how do we win this game?”

She bit her lip, closed her eyes, and recalled the position of the pieces. “I’m pretty sure there’s a Sagittarius—a bishop—in line with the king.”

“Pretty sure?”

“Positive.”

In their excitement, they had failed to realize they had reached the front of the line. After a glance to both sides, Andie put a hand on the barrier and looked down. Directly beneath them, surrounded on three sides by a metal railing in the chamber below, was the centerpiece of the temple: the Kalika murti.

The Kali idol was strange, unlike anything she had seen. Carved out of solid obsidian, the stone was a polished black rectangle standing upright, maybe as tall as she was, with rudimentary features. Kali’s small nose was carved directly from the stone, beneath three teardrop eyes painted bright red, which formed a square with the nose. The tongue, wide and flat and made of gold, extended halfway down the idol’s chest. The simplicity of the megalith possessed a timeless sort of resonance, a primeval magnetism that suggested the idol below her had been carved and worshipped before the dawn of recorded time.

The stone body of the goddess was wreathed in sari cloth, jewelry, and looping garlands of flowers. She had four arms, the left two holding a sword and a severed head. The decapitated head and lolling tongue reminded Andie of her dream, causing her to shudder.

The people around them reacted in various ways when it was their turn to behold the goddess: calmly kneeling with folded hands, giving praise with song, convulsing and gyrating as if possessed. Andie and Cal made a pretense of calm devotion and then walked slowly along the periphery of the crowd, buying time to think.

“Maybe we have to move the pieces on the board,” Andie said.

“How so?”

“I don’t know yet.”

After recalling the position of Sagittarius as best she could, she veered to the right, until she thought she was beneath the constellation of the centaur archer. She consulted the Star Phone again, nervous about exposing it so close to the priests and guards.

When she aimed the device above her head, nothing happened. Don’t be stupid. It’s the Kali yantra that has the code embedded.

She tried again, aiming at the yantra, and the 3-D image returned. “Three feet to the left,” she said.

Cal guided her by the arm as she kept focus. When she was standing directly beneath the Sagittarius constellation, it started to glow bright yellow.

Excited, she lowered the phone and told him what had happened, then worked her way through the crowd until she was standing below the position of Leo, the king. She aimed the Star Phone at the yantra again, and was happy to see she was standing in the right place.

Except nothing new happened, and the glow from Sagittarius blinked red and disappeared.

“I think we’re supposed to link two of them, but something’s not right,” she said. “Dammit.”

“That professor priest left the temple,” Cal said. “He gave you a long look and walked away quickly. Not a good sign.”

Andie bit furiously on a nail as they made their way to the side wall. After a moment, she groaned and touched a hand to her forehead. “Stupid. I’m so stupid. Why are we trying to kill a king in the temple of a goddess?”

Cal was on his tiptoes, glancing nervously over the crowd. “Good point. Though if killing the queen isn’t the goal of chess, what’s the connection?”

“She’s the second most important piece.”

“Okay,” he said, snapping his fingers. “So what if the queen is the most important piece in this particular game? What if she’s supposed to take out the king?”

Excited by the theory, Andie recalled the position of the pieces on the board again—and sensed at once they had the answer. The Cassiopeia constellation was all the way on the far end of the board, but the mother of Andromeda—the queen of Aethiopia—did have a direct line to the king.

She looped an arm through Cal’s to stay connected, then moved to stand beneath the Leo constellation again. A tingle shot through her when she pointed the Star Phone at the Kali yantra, and the stone block above her glowed yellow.

“The guards are getting antsy,” Cal said.

“They’re gonna be downright furious with what we do next,” she said, eyeing the chessboard on the ceiling and then lowering the device. She thought she had the answer now.

“Which is?”

“Cassiopeia is right above the Kali idol. Another good sign. But to link the queen to the king, I’m going to have to use the Star Phone while standing right in front of it. The viewing platform isn’t going to cut it.”

When he didn’t respond, Andie looked up to find him staring through the open-air entrance and into the courtyard. From their position, they could just see into the main