The Kingdom of the Seven Stars: Chaturanga

Chapter 5

"King Stephen's Notebook?" said Doctor Thornton, the next morning. "Oh, yes. It's not a myth. It was real."

"Are you sure, Doctor?" said Professor Shaw, looking up from the latest chessboard. "I certainly always thought it was a legend."

They were standing in the palace's library with the morning sunlight pouring in through the windows. The professors and the doctor had all brought their brightest graduate students with them this morning and they were gathered around several chessboards, comparing books, computer pads and diagrams as they tried to find a way out of the check, which had already been nicknamed 'Blackstar's Trap'.

"No, I assure you it's real," said Doctor Thornton, picking up her computer pad. "Or at least it was. There are numerous records and eyewitness accounts from King Stephen's lifetime that speak of it and there are even some pictures. Here we are."

She turned the pad around where they could see it. It showed a 3D colour photograph of King Stephen, one that Alex had never seen before, sitting next to a chessboard with one foot resting on his knee, and writing – by hand with a pen – in a large old fashioned notebook with a brown leather cover.

"There are seven pictures that I know of showing him with that same notebook," said Doctor Thornton. "None of them show any of the inside pages, frustratingly, but it matches the descriptions of it in the other sources. I wrote an essay about it as a post graduate."

"Wait, wait, wait. You mean to tell us that you've had solid documentary and visual evidence of King Stephen's Notebook for years?" said Professor Equinox. "Why, by all seven of the Sisters, didn't you mention this to me before?"

"It was after you threw me out of your advanced class for proving there was a better solution than yours to Fisher's Keyhole," said Doctor Thornton.

"It was not better than mine! It was overcomplicated and problematical!"

"So all of his notes on chess are in it?" said Alex. "He wrote everything down?"

"Well, I don't know that for certain. I've never read it," said Doctor Thornton. "And it is possible that the stories about what he wrote in have grown with the telling. But I have confirmed that he was writing in it for the better part of twenty years after the founding of the kingdom. That includes the peak of his chess playing career and many of his most famous accomplishments; like the time he played three simultaneous games of Blind Chess and won all of them, or when he played circular chess against hexagonal chess with his right hand, while playing spherical chess against rhombic chess with his left and won both. If he did write detailed notes on those games, they should all be in there."

"Really?" said Alice, raising her eyebrow. "Interesting."

"So what happened to it?" said Ellen. "Where is it? And why don't we have it?"

"I wish I knew," said Doctor Thornton. "I've spent time looking for it myself. It's not among King Stephen's surviving personal effects and it's not in the collection of any library or museum in the Pleiades. No one knows what happened to it. To be honest, when the royal steward called, I was half-hoping that the royal family had kept it secretly somewhere and I was finally going to get to see it."

"No, we haven't," said Alex. He would not even need to ask his mother about that possibility because he knew that – if they did have King Stephen's personal notes on chess stored somewhere – Jessamine or the royal steward would have brought them out already to see if they could help.

"Well, the last reference to it – that I've been able to verify – was the 13th of January 4019," said Doctor Thornton. "Three days before your ancestor made his one and only trip to Earth."