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“Cities. No Etaem. Mountains. No stone. Streams. Rivers. No fish.”
Devika repeated the riddle, abbreviated it, rotated the order. Nothing helped her decipher its meaning.
The murals they’d passed all depicted Etaem life. They hadn’t viewed all the rooms, but if it was that simple, someone would’ve found the right mural by now.
What else might have cities, mountains, rivers, and streams? she wondered.
Perhaps they should learn more about the Etaem culture to understand what the riddle referenced. The rest of the temple rooms probably provided more information, but wouldn’t someone have solved it by now if that was the case? What if they had to leave the temple to find answers? Did they need to visit the ruins of an Etaem city to understand? That wouldn’t be easy. The pyramid was oddly remote. Still, the cities could be located. All she needed was a—
“Map!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, a map,” someone deadpanned. “Great job. Now where is it?” Others in the room added similar sentiments.
Devika felt her face flush, her enthusiasm evaporating. A part of her wanted to snap that she’d figured it out on her own since no one here was going to share. If Anand were here, he would have. Loud enough for everyone in the temple to hear him.
“So, we’re searching for a map, then,” Nico said, getting them back on track.
Her embarrassment and annoyance subsiding, Devika nodded. “I think so.”
She passed through the doorway into the next segment. The ceiling star lights formed an obvious constellation. It reminded her of a shell. On the walls, Etaem carved jewelry, painted, and crafted pots. All of it incorporated snail shells. In other scenes, Etaem received snail tattoos.
It was pretty. Why was the snail so significant in Etaem culture?
On the room’s short, inner wall, pieces of snail shells formed a message.
“Pretty,” Nico noted.
Devika scanned the message, wondering if it was a new riddle. “I don’t see a map.”
“Could this message hold a clue?” Nico asked.
Her wrist-comp finished translating and she read.
“Sea snails are admired for their flexibility. They carry their homes with them wherever they roam. They survive both on land and in the water. They grow a new shell when they outgrow the old or it’s damaged.
“And their variety. Some are as green as a forest, allowing them to hide among bushes and trees. Near the ocean, their blue shells enable them to disappear in the water, then transform to match the white sand on the beach.”
Nico bit his lip, considering. “A nice homage, but no obvious riddle or clue in there.”
She re-read the text, but nothing pointed to a map. “Think we missed something?”
“Not really.” Nico pointed at the message on her wrist-comp. “Just seems like more Etaem knowledge. I say we proceed on.”
The ceiling star lights in the next room formed a square; a different arrangement than the shell shape in the previous room. Had the lights in the first two rooms also formed patterns?
In these animated murals, the Etaem built a city into the side of a mountain and a second, more technologically advanced one underground.
On the short inner wall, Devika found another message, this time printed in blocky lettering. Translated, it read: The square represents our efforts to create order in a chaotic universe. Civilization depends on order both for and from every individual. Without it, we crumble to ruins and shadows.
“Great,” Nico muttered. “Etaem philosophy. How does that help?”
“It might not.”
Nico spread his arms wide, sighing heavily. “What is this for, then? What is the purpose of all of this?”
“To teach us about them,” Devika ventured. “Everything we’ve seen and learned since arriving has centered on revealing who the Etaem were.”
“I thought this was supposed to be a trial, not a museum.”
“It’s both.”
Nico threw his hands up in the air, head rocking back to stare at the ceiling. “I could do without the history lessons. I just want the challenge.”
“That may be the problem.” Though it was only intuition, Devika sensed that understanding the Etaem culture, and its past, would be crucial to solving this trial.
******
BEARS WITH RHINOCEROS horns dominated the next room. In the animated murals, the bears battled Etaem hunters in a corralled garden surrounded by onlookers. The scene resembled a cross between a gladiatorial arena and a zoo.
The short interior wall showed a mother bear with cub and an Etaem mother with a young child, legs splayed wide as it attempted to walk. Chiseled into the wall beneath the scene, Devika found a story. An ice bear cub and Etaem child had wandered out to play and gotten lost in a surprise snowstorm. The two mothers, out searching for their children, crossed each other’s tracks. After first suspecting each other and trading threats, the two mothers worked together to save their children, the start of the relationship between the Etaem and the ice bears.
“So, the ice bears were sentient?” Nico smiled broadly.
Devika shook her head. “I doubt it. If other intelligent life had shared the planet, Etaem history would have a record of it. This sounds like an ancient myth of how they tamed the ice bears.”
His shoulders sagged. “This is turning into more of a class field trip than a master trial. Where are the Etaem going with this?”
The star lights on the ceiling formed a rough outline of an ice bear.
“I wonder if we’re seeing the Etaem constellations?” Devika snapped a picture.
“Where?” Nico scowled.
“Each room we’ve been through so far has had the lights organized into a distinct shape. I wonder if each represents a different Etaem constellation.”
“Could be,” he admitted, “but I’m not sure how that helps us.”
The next room’s murals showed snakes, particularly twin serpents. Their story told of deceitful twin boys who poisoned their older brother to prevent him from becoming ruler of Metammi. The goddess Ruuminya did not want her favored kingdom destroyed; the elder son, according to prophesy, would lead that kingdom to an enlightened age. So the Goddess saved the eldest son and turned the devious twins into serpents as punishment.
On its ceiling, the star lights formed twin snakes. She got a picture of it as well, just in case.
The beach city returned on the murals in the next room, along with a rhombus constellation on the ceiling. Sharks came next.
More general marine life followed, with a constellation of a fish on the ceiling. An accompanying parable read: Drop a fish in your neighbor’s gullet and they’ll rejoice for a day. Train a child to swim and hunt and they’ll prosper for a lifetime.
While this pyramid presented an interesting display of Etaem culture, Devika found her own enthusiasm waning, too. And the number of participants had noticeably decreased from outside the temple and in the first couple of rooms. Those present studied the walls while consulting their wrist-comps. Are they all searching for a map, or are they in a more advanced stage of the Evanesco trial?
A constellation of a fisherman adorned the ceiling in the next room. Three of the walls illustrated stories about Zethlir, the hunter/fisher god who populated Havendesh with game to support Etaem life. On the inner wall, they found another Etaem inscription.
Devika translated the text and read, “How can you stand behind Zethlir, while he is standing behind you?”
“What do you think it means?” Nico asked, without enthusiasm.
She shook her head.
“Think it’s a clue to the map’s location?”
They searched the room for some clue that might make sense of the riddle. They found nothing.
“Let’s keep going,” Devika suggested.
After the fisherman, they found a room devoted to Ruuminya, the mother goddess from the serpent twins’ story. Per the Etaem religion, Ruuminya birthed Havendesh, the planet portrayed as an egg from which all life emerged. When an Etaem mother laid eggs, she both gave birth to the next generation and honored Ruuminya.
The last room’s star light constellation formed a complex geometric shape.
Nico stared at it. “Is that a soccer ball?”
“Dodecahedron,” Devika answered.
The animated murals showed Etaem spaceships and stations orbiting Havendesh, with most of them dodecahedron-shaped. A large number of people filled this room, studying the walls. She guessed they must think this room had a clue to the map’s location. Or that the map was here in disguise.
It took her and Nico some time to take pics of the entire room and assemble them into a 3D panorama on their wrist-comps. Nothing pointed to the map’s location, and this was the last room in the temple. The far doorway led them back to the main entrance with the pyramid constellation on the ceiling.
“There’s no map anywhere,” Nico said.
“No obvious map,” Devika corrected. “Otherwise, somebody would’ve located it by now. Unless someone is keeping it a secret like the Etaem’s identity.”
“Do you think we overlooked it?”
She bit her lip, considering. “Either there’s a hidden room somewhere, or the Etaem thoroughly disguised the map. What else could they use as a map?”
Nico studied a nearby mural, which showed Etaem fishing. “You know....” He shook his head.
“What?” Devika studied the mural in front of him. Had he found a clue?
Nico pointed at the scene. “A lot of Etaem life dealt with seas, oceans, and aquatic life. There’s Etaem fishing. Other rooms highlight sea snails, sharks, fish, and the fisherman.”
“Yes. What’s that got to do with a map?”
“Back on Earth, early navigators used stars to orient them and tell time. Especially at sea.”
Her eyes widened. She retrieved the pictures she’d taken of the Etaem constellations on the ceilings in each room. After isolating the constellation designs from the pics, she compared them against a picture of the night sky on her wrist-comp. On the Havendesh summer solstice, these twelve constellations created a circle overhead. A complete map of the sky!
“Check this out.” She showed Nico her wrist-comp. She leaned in close, whispering. “It’s our map.”
“Seems we’re missing something,” he said, brow furrowed.
She studied the constellation map. “What?”
“There’s a gap between the Zethlir and fish constellations.” He pointed at an area of stars in the middle. “Like a pizza with a slice removed. Did we miss one?”
She shook her head. “I got them all. Unless they hid one. Perhaps that’s our next clue.”
******
“WHERE DO WE FIND THIS missing constellation?” Nico asked, studying the images on his wrist-comp.
Devika checked the Space City database. It listed more than a hundred constellations from Etaem records, but none that paired up with these twelve to complete the circle. If her theory was right, the database had incomplete records.
“Let’s go back to the Zethlir and fish rooms,” she suggested.
“There’s no way a hidden room exists between them.”
“Not between them, no,” Devika agreed. “But these rooms wrap around in a circle. What if there’s a hidden room at the center? Perhaps with a secret entrance.”
“Novices,” Adrian said, emerging out of the crowd with Falk and Vincent. “People have searched for hidden rooms for years. There’s no evidence of one.”
“Certainly not in the middle,” Falk said, sneering at Devika. “I’ve calculated the size of the rooms against the temple’s dimensions. There’s not enough space there for a hidden room. With the structure of the temple, there must be a massive stone stud that supports the weight overhead.”
“But hey, those are the simple ideas I’d expect from two Academy students.” Adrian smirked. “Why don’t you run along and report your findings to Instructors Tereshkova and Nez? Ask for extra credit.” He swung a fist in a ‘Good work!’ gesture, then laughed and turned to his buddies. “Let’s go do the real research, while these two discuss last decade’s theories.”
“Don’t mind them,” Nico said. “It’s a good idea. Not in the center of the Temple, but perhaps there’s a hidden door in the floor or ceiling.”
Her jaw ached. She’d been grinding her teeth. She hated the boys’ condescension, the same she’d received from so many others. Classmates who ridiculed her for taking more advanced courses at the Academy. Adults giving her ‘That’s nice’ smiles when she told them about her work supporting Instructor Fintan with the Azymi outbreak last year, followed by knowing glances that translated into ‘How naïve of this little girl.’
She hated always having to prove herself worthy just to be here.
Anand defended her every time he heard the insults, but that only made it worse. Not that he did so—he was only protecting his sister—but that he had to in the first place.
Nico tapped her on the shoulder, his expression eager. “Come on. I want to prove those jerks wrong.”
They returned to Zethlir’s room. They’d already searched it while trying to decipher its strange riddle and found nothing that hinted at a hidden room. So Devika checked out the fish room, re-examining it more closely, but coming up empty there as well. Nor did she see anything that made sense of the riddle from Zethlir’s room.
How could you stand behind your father while he stood behind you?
Frustrated, she wondered if there was another way to get the answer. What if she could first figure out what the missing constellation must be? Thus far, they had a pyramid, a fox, a sea snail, a cube, an ice bear, the serpent twins, a rhombus, a shark, a fish, the missing constellation, Zethlir, Ruuminya, and the Dodecahedron. A mix of geometric shapes, a pair of deities, and a bunch of animals.
Could there be another deity?
She checked the Space City database, but came up empty. Once more she wondered about the possibility of having to travel to another location to learn more about the Etaem. Maybe they could find out if the Etaem had any others. Considering human history, it seemed likely.
But that wasn’t information she could get today.
There were ample animals represented in the constellations. Could there be another? Possibly, but she had no way to narrow down the planet’s fauna to a likely answer.
The third option was a missing geometric shape. That she could easily research. After all, none of those shapes were unique to the Etaem.
She ran a search of the geometric constellations on her wrist-comp, which revealed that each shape was a part of a collection known on Earth as platonic solids. The pyramid, more formally known as a tetrahedron, the cube or hexahedron, the rhombus, which was actually an octahedron, the dodecahedron, and a final one known as the icosahedron. Was that the missing constellation in the Etaem list? She checked and found an icosahedron constellation did exist in the Etaem records, and it fit perfectly into their map at the summer solstice.
There was also a historical connection between the platonic solids and the classical elements. The tetrahedron represented fire; the cube, earth; the octahedron, air; the dodecahedron, aether; and the icosahedron, water, which made sense for it to come between the Zethlir and fish constellations.
Her momentary excitement fell as she realized it still didn’t help her much. The icosahedron constellation should come between the fish and Zethlir, but there was no space. There was no obvious connection between the icosahedron and the map either, or between it and the riddle in Zethlir’s room.
A woman in one corner held up her wrist-comp, preparing to take a picture of a segment of a mural. As she backed up, studying her wrist-comp, she neared a group studying the opposite wall.
“Hey, watch out!” Devika called.
The woman backed into a tall man who jumped and turned around, giving the woman a startled glance.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said, blushing and holding up a hand in apology.
“That’s it!” Devika rushed to Nico and clutched one of his arms in both hands. “That’s the answer!”
“What is?” he asked, head swiveling from her to the woman who had backed into the other group.
“When that woman backed into the man, their backs pressed against each other. She stood behind him and he behind her.”
“I think you’re right,” he said, smiling. “Though if that’s the missing constellation, it’s not very exciting. A back?”
She arched an eyebrow. “The missing constellation is an icosahedron.”
“A what?”
“Icosahedron. A geometric shape with twenty faces. It’s a platonic solid, same as the others in the Etaem constellation, and it’s tied to water.”
Nico scrunched his nose. “You lost me.”
She didn’t answer, instead reviewing the pieces, trying to assemble the puzzle. They needed a map, which should direct them to the next part of the trial. The Etaem constellations on the ceiling in every room mirrored a map of the Havendesh night sky, but the icosahedron was missing from where it should be between Zethlir and the fish.
She walked to the doorway between the rooms, knowing it was impossible for a hidden entrance to exist there.
“How can you stand behind your father, while he stands behind you?” she whispered.
A ridiculous notion came to her.
“Nico, come here,” she said, motioning him to join her.
“This is going to sound stupid,” she said as he approached, “—but stand with your back to mine.”
“Right here?” he asked doubtfully, but without animosity or condescension like with Adrian and company.
She nodded. “Right here in the doorway, stand with your back against mine.”
“Okay,” he said.
She faced into the fish room and took a step backward, bumping against him.
“What now?” he asked.
A wall of darkness enveloped them.