by Darren Shan
My fingers fly from one tumbler to another and I start to figure out how they link, and the order in which they need to be spun. I whistle as I twist one, then another, picking at them with my nails, rolling them with the balls of my fingers.
It takes me maybe ten minutes to crack the outer layer. As I roll the final tumbler, there’s a clicking noise and the pieces slide back out of reach, to be replaced by a new mix of tumblers and levers. I start to explore again, moving faster now, building up a map inside my head.
Then my index finger brushes over a bump that makes me stop and lose interest in everything else.
I return to the bump, a piece of raised marble, and my hand trembles. I’m instantly transported back in time, to a towering cliff face, and it’s as if I’m scaling it again, clinging to the rock with a fragile set of hooks, just a slip away from a long fall and a certain death.
My hand jerks and the lock goes flying from my grip. It rattles across the table and drops towards the floor. Before it lands, Winston appears beside me and stoops to snatch it from the air, surprisingly swift for so old a man.
“Careful,” he laughs. “That might have smashed if I hadn’t...”
He stops and his face whitens. The lock must act as a reminder of a dark time in his own life, because his hands start to tremble like mine.
“Winston,” I croak, but he doesn’t reply. He’s staring at the lock. “Winston,” I say again, and this time he stirs.
“I’d forgotten about this,” he says. “I thought I’d thrown it away long ago.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Just a lock,” he says unconvincingly.
“There’s more to it than that,” I say. “I felt an S inside.”
Winston’s gaze rises. “An S?” he says, trying but failing to sound casual.
“It’s not the first time I’ve come across an S,” I tell him. “I found one on a lock in Canadu. It was a lock you’d worked on – there was a W carved into it too – but I got the feeling that another locksmith had worked on it after you, one whose name began with an –”
“– S,” Winston says, nodding slowly. “How come you never told me this before?”
I shrug. “I forgot. It didn’t seem important.”
“It’s not, really,” Winston says, and his gaze returns to the lock. He stares at it in silence a while longer, then places it back on the table. “S stands for Stefan. He was a student of mine, the last I taught before you came along.” He looks at me again and I’m startled to see that he’s crying. “He broke my heart,” Winston weeps, then touches the scars on his cheeks. “And almost destroyed me.”
I don’t know what to say, so I just sit there looking away. Eventually, with the tears still flowing, I get up and give Winston an awkward hug. He smiles weakly, so I hug him again, firmly this time.
“I’m a foolish old goat,” Winston chuckles, wiping his cheeks clean.
“No you’re not,” I mutter, then clear my throat. “Can I let go now, or do you want me to carry on hugging you?”
“You can let go,” Winston says, ruffling my hair before I step away. “You’re a good friend, Archie.”
“I thought I was your student,” I grin.
“You can be both,” he says, then snorts. “Trust a locksmith to break down in tears because of a lock.”
I pick up the chunk of marble and our smiles fade as we stare at it. I’d like to ask Winston why it upset him so much, but he’s never talked about his past and I don’t want to be nosy. But just as I’m about to put the lock away, Winston says, “Stefan was my most gifted pupil.”
“Until I came along,” I joke.
“Yes,” Winston says, and that startles me. Before I can ask if he really means it, he ploughs on. “He was Family.”
The universe of the Merge is a bit like the Internet cloud, but instead of being built up and sustained through a network of computers, it nestles inside a collection of human brains. The royals who make up that network – kings, queens, princes and princesses – are known as Family members.
“Can royals be locksmiths?” I frown.
“They can be anything that the Merged can be,” Winston says, “but in reality that rarely happens. Stefan was young, a prince of Diamond. There was great excitement when he was discovered. King Lloyd was elderly and had already started to lose his mind. They saw Stefan as the saviour of the realm.”
The realms are like continents. There are six of them, and each is maintained by a maximum of nine royals. If all the Family members of a realm die without being replaced, the realm collapses and everything and everyone in it is lost forever.
“Stefan turned his back on official business,” Winston continues. “He was aware of the burden he’d have to shoulder when Lloyd died, so he decided to enjoy life while he could. He was curious and travelled exhaustively, got involved in all sorts of wild adventures, turned his hand to lots of different things. Then he discovered locks and his true talent began to unfold. He sought a tutor to help him realise his potential, and found his way to me. He was a fast learner...”
Winston drifts off into silence. He’s smiling wistfully, remembering happy times. Then the smile fades.
“Over time, I came to look upon Stefan as a son. He seemed to mirror my feelings, and even called me Father on occasion, but... What do you know about Old Man Reap?” Winston asks abruptly.
“Nothing,” I reply. “I heard a few people refer to him when I was in the Merge last year, and most were terrified by the mere mention of his name, but I don’t know why.”
“He was the scourge of the Merge,” Winston says softly, “an immensely powerful royal who wanted to control all the realms. He was cruel and unforgiving, a tyrant even by the standards of the SubMerged. His people hated and feared him, but at the same time respected and revered him. Tyranny is seen as a strength in Ruby, and Old Man Reap was the most tyrannical of all.
“The SubMerged had tried to take over other realms in the past,” Winston goes on, “but slyly, carefully, politically. Old Man Reap took a different approach. He set out to invade with the mightiest army the Merge has ever witnessed. He was a Supreme Regent, which allowed him to set the bar so high.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Devisers have to obey the commands of their realm’s royals,” Winston says. “For instance, if the royals of Topaz wanted to melt all the ice and replace it with sand, their devisers would have to obey. They couldn’t say no.”
I know nothing about Topaz, but that doesn’t seem important, so I let it pass.
“Family members can only control their own devisers,” Winston goes on. “A king of Topaz is powerless in Emerald or any other realm. But there was always one, the Supreme Regent, who had the power to control any realm’s devisers. The power passed to a new royal, usually in another Family, whenever the holder died, but then Old Man Reap came along and decided to abandon the Born, live in the Merge forever and keep the power for himself.
“He built an army,” Winston says, “then set out to conquer in a fast, furious blitz. Pearl fell first. Then they invaded Emerald, where we managed to stall them. The war dragged on for years, and hundreds of thousands were killed. It wasn’t confined to Emerald, but that’s where the bloodshed was heaviest.”
“Were you part of the fighting?” I ask.
Winston shakes his head. “This happened before my time, more than five hundred years ago. After several years, the advantage swung to the SubMerged. Emerald was poised to fall, but on the brink of a great victory Old Man Reap was undone by a team whose mission was to banish him to the Lost Zone.”
“I know about that place,” I interrupt. “Inez told me it’s been formed from the wreckage of the three realms that have fallen, Jade, Malachite and...”
“Amethyst,” Winston says when I struggle to recall the name of the third realm. “We don’t know much about the Lost Zone, because nobody returns once they cross. That’s what happened to Old Man Reap. The Merged team infilt
rated his camp and opened a snap borehole to the Lost Zone.”
“A snap borehole?” I echo.
“They’re domed boreholes that form quickly and mushroom out in the blink of an eye. Whereas most boreholes are similar in appearance to doors or windows, a snap borehole might expand several metres – even hundreds of metres – in all directions, then retract instantly, trapping everyone within its reach and transporting them to wherever the borehole had been linked — in this case, the Lost Zone.
“Many of Old Man Reap’s closest lieutenants were swept away with him, doomed to wander the Lost Zone until the end of the Merge. It was a blow that struck to the core of the SubMerged, and it’s only in the last hundred years that they’ve really recovered from it.”
Winston stands and rubs the small of his back. He looks old and weary. Without saying anything, he leads me through the rooms of his home to a balcony overlooking the wrap zone. He sits on a stool and I sit on the floor next to him, crossing my legs and drinking in the sights.
Vines stretch across the sky, some the diameter of a grapevine, others so large that you could drive a car through them. Vines like these bind the Merge together and are everywhere, running across the sky, burrowing into the ground, twisting through villages, towns and cities.
Unlike other Merged zones, the wrap zone includes elements of the Born. I can see the Sphinx, Uluru, the Eifel Tower, the Statue of Liberty. The deviser who made this place used vines to link landmarks from my world, weaving them into the fabric of the Merge.
“The view’s wasted on me,” Winston says. “I thought, when I came here, that I’d sit on this balcony for hours every day, but I just can’t muster much interest in the Born. I should abandon this place and step into the fires of release, put my time in the Merge behind me and start anew.”
I want to ask about the fires of release, but he carries on before I can.
“There was a truce until a hundred years ago, life trickling along quietly, as it had before Old Man Reap stirred up his people. Then the SubMerged began scheming again. The royals of Sapphire got wind of a plot to kill a few of them. Barriers were installed on the vines in the palace and I was hired to help seal them. Stefan worked on the locks with me.”
“That’s why there was an S carved into the lock I tried to pick,” I note, recalling my failed attempt to get through one of the barriers.
Winston grimaces. “No. As skilled as Stefan was, an apprentice shouldn’t sign a mentor’s lock. Stefan was only supposed to help with the minor work. I wasn’t aware that he was adapting locks. Not in the beginning anyway.”
Winston strokes one of the longer scars on his face. It starts next to his right ear, curves across his cheek and angles under his chin. Just looking at it gives me the shivers. I can’t imagine how painful it must have been when the wound was inflicted.
“We all have secrets,” Winston says softly. “There are things we choose not to share with even our closest allies. For instance, I never told Stefan about the overlap in Canadu, the cliffs from the Born which help support the palace.”
“Inez was amazed by that,” I tell him. “She didn’t think it was possible to have an overlap in the Merge.”
“They’re incredibly rare,” Winston says. “Even the current royals don’t know about the one in Canadu — the queen who ordered its construction commanded the devisers who worked on it not to share the information with anyone. I was only told because they needed a locksmith to beef up security on the boreholes in the bark of the tree, where it overlapped with the cliffs. They swore me to secrecy, so I didn’t tell Stefan about the overlap, which was a blessing. Because, as I said, we all keep secrets, and as it turned out, Stefan was hiding a secret far darker than any of mine.
“He was SubMerged.”
4
“Family members are free to choose their alignment,” Winston says. “If they want to be SubMerged, that’s fine. I wouldn’t have cared if Stefan chose that path, any more than it bothered me when Oki turned.”
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“A king in Topaz,” Winston says. “He was Merged for most of his life, but chose to switch. He was a good friend of mine, so I was disappointed, but it didn’t mean we had to stop being friends.”
“You stayed friends?” I snort.
“Why not?” Winston responds.
“The SubMerged are evil.”
He purses his lips. “Very few are truly evil. Most just believe in a demanding way of life. They can be brutal and harsh, but there aren’t a lot like Old Man Reap, or Orlan Stiletto and Argate Axe, or... Stefan.”
“Stefan was evil?” I whisper, my eyes widening.
Winston sighs. “I asked a fellow Lox to check some of the locks that I’d installed in the vines in Canadu, to ensure my work was up to scratch. The locks deterred the locksmith, which pleased me, until he said that Stefan couldn’t have much left to learn if I was allowing him to sign my locks.
“I went back and examined them all,” Winston says, “and found that Stefan had worked on several of them, adding his own levels. It was masterful work. In fact the locks had been so skilfully tampered with that I could no longer open them.”
“No way,” I gasp.
“At first that delighted me,” Winston says. “I took it for granted that Stefan had done this to surprise me. I thought he wanted to present himself to me as a master, before setting off on his own. I even wondered if he’d hidden his expertise because he enjoyed being my apprentice and didn’t want to leave me.”
Winston snorts at himself with contempt, then sighs again.
“Stefan’s mistake was that his work was too good. If I’d been able to open the locks, I’d have complimented him, and he could have carried on with the charade. But the new levels intrigued me. I kept picking at them, and while I beavered away, dark thoughts crossed my mind. It struck me that only Stefan could open them now. Also, the locks were only on vines that led to a pair of bedrooms. I started to ask myself if he might have chosen those particular vines on purpose.”
“Who slept in the rooms?” I ask.
“Merged royals,” Winston says softly. “I checked the vines to the rooms where the SubMerged royals slept, but Stefan hadn’t altered any of the locks on those. I was deeply disturbed, but didn’t want to believe that the boy who was all but a son to me was planning to harm his fellow royals. So I made the worst mistake of my life and confronted him. Being a clever boy, he’d planned for that eventuality. While I was talking, he slyly removed a lock from a pocket. When he picked it, a snap borehole opened and we wound up in Ruby, where King Adil’s soldiers were waiting for me.”
Winston’s fingers creep to his cheeks and shake as he runs them across the scars. I expect a long silence, maybe more tears, but he presses ahead without pausing, his eyes taking on a stony, detached glint. It’s almost as if he’s describing something that happened to another person.
“Stefan had teamed up with Adil long before he became my apprentice. They were both admirers of Old Man Reap and were introduced through one of his officers who hadn’t ended up in the Lost Zone. They got along fabulously, and when Adil saw the young prince’s potential, he told him about a pet project of his. Stefan was intrigued and instantly got on board with the plan.”
“What plan?” I ask.
“They wanted to bring back Old Man Reap,” Winston says grimly.
“But that’s impossible,” I gasp. “You said there’s no escape from the Lost Zone.”
“To date there hasn’t been,” Winston says, “but Adil hoped to open a borehole from the Lost Zone back to the Merge. I’m not sure how – they kept that information to themselves – but Stefan became a key colleague. His raw talent took him a long way, but when it became clear that he needed assistance, they sent him back to the Merged realms, to hook up with someone who could help him develop.”
“They sent him to you,” I moan, and Winston nods robotically.
“This all came out during the course of my tort
ure,” he says. “Stefan took part, and delighted in telling me how he’d played me.”
“I don’t understand,” I frown. “Why were they torturing you?”
“Stefan had overtaken me in certain areas,” Winston says, “but I was still a more skilled locksmith than him, with experience that he lacked. They hoped to make use of me, to break my spirit and bend me to their will.”
“But that’s crazy,” I mutter. “There’s no way you’d have helped them.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Winston says. “We all have our breaking points. If you put a man through enough pain... twist him the right way... burn away all that makes him who he is...” Winston strokes his scars again and gulps. “It wasn’t a matter of if I succumbed to their cruelty, but when. Then, if I proved to be the missing link, I’d have helped bring back the most dangerous tyrant the Merge has ever known, freeing him to wreak havoc again. That would have been some legacy, huh?”
Winston sneers as he says that, and my heart almost breaks for him.
“How did you escape?” I ask.
“A friend rescued me,” Winston says. “A queen assembled a squad, managed to pinpoint my location, and slipped into Ruby when Adil and most of his troops were absent. They healed my wounds when we got back, but I asked them to leave some of the scars to remind me. The queen wanted me to work with her to punish Adil, but I was weary and in pain. I looked for a new, isolated home, eventually wound up in this wrap zone, and cut myself off from the spheres. Needless to say, I didn’t take on any more apprentices after that.” He smiles. “Until you came along.”
“And Stefan?” I ask. “Is he still working with Adil to free Old Man Reap?”
Winston’s smile disappears and he whispers, “No.” He looks at the landmarks in the distance. “Stefan was present when I was rescued. He fled. I chased him.”
Winston stops.
“I caught him,” Winston says, and stops again.