All he had to do was change the future in such a way that Valin did not become the descendant of someone named Izmir the Clown.
So . . . change the future, but without changing the future.
Headache pills were still hundreds of years away from being invented, so Mack shrugged it off, said, “Whatever,” and at the first opportunity introduced himself to Sean Patrick O’Flanagan MacAvoy.
“Hey, my name’s Mack.”
It was a couple of days after Mack had been rudely shanghaied to the seventeenth century, and they were watching a game of polo. Polo is a game where men on horses hit a ball using long-handled hammers. In Cossack polo the ball was a head. Yes, they were a pretty tough bunch of guys, the Cossacks.
“Cad ba mhaith leat?” Sean Patrick replied. Because he was Irish and spoke only Irish, and just enough Russian to converse with his Cossack girlfriend.
Mack was reluctant to use up any of his enlightened puissance—after all, anything might happen—but he had no choice, so he used a Vargran spell that allowed him to understand what Sean Patrick was saying, and to be understood in return.
It turned out all Sean Patrick had said was, “What do you want?”
“Oh, um, just . . . hi.”
“Hello, fellow.”
“So. Your girlfriend. She’s hot, huh?” This was an amazingly stupid thing to say, and Mack was relieved that the Cossacks standing around didn’t stab him right then and there. This was, after all, the daughter of Taras Bulba he was calling “hot.”
“She should step outside if she’s hot,” Sean Patrick said. “It’s chilly outside.”
Having dodged that bullet, Mack wondered how to proceed. “So. Um. You two are tight, right? I mean, you’re totally going to marry Boguslawa. Right?”
Sean Patrick stuck his thumbs in his belt and puffed out his chest and said, “I have pledged my undying love.”
“Good. And nothing could possibly change that, right?”
“Why? What have you heard?”
There was a loud roar of approval as out on the polo field one of the Cossacks swung his mallet and sent the battered head-ball flying. The horses thundered toward the goal.
So far this was going badly for Mack. But things were about to go much worse. Because not all those thundering hooves were from Cossack polo ponies. There was a host of horsemen rushing from the south, and judging by the beards and turbans, they were not Cossacks.
Suddenly arrows were sprouting in the chests of Cossack polo players. Which is a poetic way of saying that they were getting killed by bows and arrows from the attacking army.
Valin rushed to Mack, grabbed his arm, and hissed, “We have to get out of here! Sean Patrick, get Boguslawa!”
But Sean Patrick was already beating feet toward the distant woods. An arrow passed so close to Boguslawa that the feathers smeared her lipstick.
“Ah!” Mack cried. He grabbe
d Boguslawa’s hand and yelled to Xiao and Stefan, “Let’s get out of here!”
Their Cossack guards had bigger problems than chasing them right then, so the four of them—a boy-hero and his bully-bodyguard from twenty-first-century Sedona and a dragon-girl from twenty-first-century China and a Cossack princess-babe from seventeenth-century Russia—all ran into the Punjabi woods just ahead of a guru-general’s army.
It was all very confusing, but when there are arrows and spears flying, it’s pretty easy to focus on fleeing.
Ten
Here’s what was going on. Mukhlis Khan was invading India and Guru Hargobind was trying to stop him. Taras Bulba was just there to see if he could get a job working for one side or the other. He was your average, hardworking savage warlord and he needed a job.
Valin was there helping Taras Bulba and trying to rewrite history.
Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout was there trying to get Valin to kill Mack.
None of this will be on the test. Just understand this: Valin would never join the Magnificent Twelve so long as he blamed Mack for being descended from Izmir the Clown.