The Golden Temple is really, actually, gold. It’s covered in gold, not gold paint. Gold gold. It’s rectangular, and sits surrounded by water in an artificial lake. All around the lake are ornate, impressive white buildings that are part of the whole temple complex, but the thing that draws your attention is definitely the temple itself.
Because it’s gold.
It looks like the jewelry box a queen or empress might own. Like maybe you could sort of pry the top off and it would be full of bracelets and earrings and rings.
There’s a narrow, covered causeway leading out across the water to the temple. Music is playing over loudspeakers. It’s not great music, really, but hey, it’s music. And people from all over the world sort of shuffle down the causeway to get a look inside the temple.
There is a strict no-cuts rule, but Mack dealt with the line by showing up on a dragon. It’s amazing the effect a turquoise dragon will have on people waiting in line. Fortunately the water in the lake is shallow, so the panicked worshippers and assorted tourists were in no danger of drowning as they leaped shrieking off the causeway.
Xiao landed, and Mack and Stefan dismounted at the end of the causeway, which was now almost completely clear.
“Shall I change back?” Xiao asked.
“Probably yes. I’m not sure how they feel about dragons in their temple.”
The three of them—Mack, Stefan, and Xiao—walked quickly to the entrance of the temple. An old man in a bright-yellow turban stepped out to block their path. He didn’t look happy about it, and in fact he was trembling a bit, but since he had a fantastic, very-nearly-impossible white beard, Mack was also trembling.
“You . . . you . . . you . . . ,” the man said.
“Uh-uh-uh-uhuhuhuhuh!” Mack said.
“Move aside, old dude,” Stefan said threateningly.
Fortunately Xiao was there and had the presence of mind to ask the old man what he wanted. It turned out all he wanted was for them to take off their shoes and cover their heads. With a palsied hand he offered them scarves for that last part.
It’s one thing to go busting into temples with a bully and a dragon, but at the very least you have to observe the customs. So it was barefoot and scarf-headed that the three of them stepped into the Golden Temple of Amritsar.
Which was also mostly golden inside. But not just gold like someone had spray-painted a garage or whatever. No, this was gold that had been hammered on, gold on top of more gold, gold designs against gold backgrounds. Part of the ceiling had a shallow, scallop- shaped dome that was encrusted with gold and from which hung a massive chandelier made of, you guessed it . . . crystal.27
There was also a sort of awning set up inside where Mack assumed holy people sat and said holy things. But there was no one there at the moment. Apparently it was not a 24/7 service.
There was also an open second level, also gold, with a gold railing, a gold . . . Well, okay, you get the point: gold.
But one thing was clear: Valin was nowhere to be seen.
“I thought there were going to be lentils,” Stefan said, disappointed.
“Valin came here,” Mack mused. “Why? Why here?”
“I will question the old gentleman,” Xiao said. “He’s fleeing, but he’s fleeing slowly.”
It was true. The old man was fleeing very slowly, and Xiao easily caught up with him. She was back seconds later—just after Mack stopped Stefan from prying a gold flower off the wall—with the news that a very strange boy with a sword, and a man all in green, had indeed entered the temple.
“The man says they spoke some words of a language he did not know and disappeared,” Xiao reported.
The man with the amazing white beard had nerved himself to come back after Xiao reassured him. And now he pointed helpfully to a spot. There was nothing very interesting about this spot except, obviously, it was in the Golden Temple. But the spot itself wasn’t different from a thousand other spots. Except for the ceiling fan.
Yes, there are ceiling fans in the Golden Temple, and yes, they are gold. In this case, though, probably just gold paint.
Mack stared up thoughtfully at the fan, which was turning slowly. Xiao and Stefan stood beside him, likewise staring thoughtfully up at the fan. Although Stefan’s precise thought was, So where’s the lentils?
Here’s the thing to know: the people who worship at the temple are not exactly the same as the people who built the temple. The Golden Temple was started in the sixteenth century, and back in those days people knew that you couldn’t just build a golden temple in the middle of a sacred lake without causing some disturbances in the space-time continuum. Of course in those ancient times they didn’t call it the space-time continuum because that concept wasn’t invented until Star Trek in the twentieth century. But those ancient builders knew some things. They knew there was something strange and compelling and magical about this spot, which back then was actually in the middle of a forest, not a city.
In fact, when they were first building the temple, they hoped to keep that strange force under control with four walls and four entrances and a lot of stone, marble, jewels, and gold.
It worked. For four centuries it worked.
Then, modern folk decided they needed some comfort. So they added ceiling fans. Had they just put in air-conditioning, that would have been fine. But a ceiling fan? That’s a vortex, my friends, and vortices28 are known disturbers of the space-time continuum.
Especially if you add Vargran.
“What words did Valin speak?” Mack mused.
“We may never know,” Xiao said.
“What are lentils anyway?” Stefan wondered.
“Wait,” Mack said, and snapped his fingers. And then his cell phone chimed to let him know that he had a voice mail, and worshippers and tourists alike, who had begun to filter back in, shushed him and gave him some hard stares, so he muted the phone, thus continuing to doom Richard Gere Middle School.29
“What if we tried . . .” And then Mack said, “Unt-ma nos Vargran!”
Unt-ma being the “or else” tense of the verb repeat. And nos meaning “earlier.”
Suddenly the breeze blowing off the fan was a lot stiffer.
A lot stiffer. Like a tornado. A small but powerful vortex that just wrapped itself around Mack, Stefan, and Xiao.
Their hair whipped into their eyes. Their clothing snapped and pressed against them. They had to shout like reporters in a hurricane to be heard. The cloths they’d worn on their heads were torn away and it suddenly occurred to Mack that, whatever was happening here, it probably would have been a good idea to be wearing shoes.
He had tender feet, Mack did.
A fiery line, like molten gold, formed a circle around them on the floor. Mack exchanged a look with the turbanned gentleman, who nodded as if to say, “Yep, that’s what happened with the other two.”
And suddenly the Golden Temple was gone. Or to be more accurate, Mack, Stefan, and Xiao were no longer standing in a stiff downdraft in the temple, but were instead standing in ankle-deep water in a lake surrounded by a forest.
It wasn’t much of a lake, really. If it was all as shallow as the part they were standing in, it would be easy enough to walk to the shore in any direction. And a bewildered Mack was trying to figure out just which shore would be closest when Stefan said, “Huh.”
Stefan had many variations on “Huh.” This particular version meant something like, “Dude, you better look at this.”
Mack followed the direction of Stefan’s stare. And there, on the shore behind them, were about a dozen men on horses. They were rather fantastically costumed (the men, not the horses). Some wore white robes; some looked like they were wearing animal skins; others wore what appeared to be colorful silk.
They had an amazing variety of headgear: tall fur hats that looked like they came from mountain goats, blue turbans, golden scarves, and floppy felt caps. They had amazing sashes, scarves, pennants, and belts.
None were bearded, but almost all had impressive mustaches. They were dark-skinned, similar to Valin, but with faces that wore scars that were clearly from having come too close to bladed weapons. They had bright, alert, slightly crazy eyes.
All of them were armed with a museum’s worth of daggers, spears, lances, and swords in scabbards that ranged from simple oxhide to bejeweled masterpieces of the scabbarding art.
Their horses were big, shaggy beasts, often also festooned and bejeweled and spangled. The horses, too, had bright, alert, slightly crazy eyes.
“Those boys,” Stefan said, offering his professional appraisal, “are trouble.”
Almost lost within the scary crew was a reed-thin old man all in green. But you couldn’t overlook the person clearly in charge, out in front astride the finest horse: Valin.
Valin looked like he was born on a horse. Maybe he was.
“Welcome, Mack!” Valin cried.
Then Valin drew his sword and yelled an order. The order he yelled was, “Seize them!”