The Seal of Oblivion (20 page)

“We should take it while she’s
gone,” Adria said snapping her out her thoughts.

“No,” Laqiya said. “We shouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“I just have this feeling… We need
to go.”

“Laqiya, really?”

“Trust me on this one,” Laqiya said
as she turned to open the door again. She pushed on it only to find it stuck.
It then occurred to her that she hadn’t closed the door.

“Adria,” Laqiya said pushing on the
door. “Did you close the door?”

“No,” Adria said turning her head
in Laqiya’s direction but still looking at the staff. “Why?”

“Darn it,” Laqiya muttered and then
narrowed her eyes. “Adria move.”

“Wha-aaahhh!”
Adria screamed as the chains that were on the wall lashed out at her.

Laqiya wanted to see if she was
okay but choked as a chains wrapped around her neck. She gasped and latched
onto the chains to pull them off her neck before they yanked her back, right
into Lady Sahajah’s grasp.

Chapter
Fifteen

The
Seal of Oblivion

“Laqiya,” Adria cried getting up to
help her only for Sahajah to brush her hand dismissively in the air causing
Adria to be thrown into the wall.

Laqiya struggled against Lady
Sahajah muttering a few obscenities that would make her mother ground her for
life, not that she could say them clearly though, for she couldn’t breathe
properly with the chain around her neck.

“Now, now pretty flower. Let’s not
struggle,” Sahajah whispered in her ear. “I need your help.”

“Sure,” Laqiya managed
sarcastically, “I’ll help you even though you’re trying to kill me.”

“O contraire,” said Sahajah. “I
want you alive.”

Laqiya couldn’t help but be freaked
out by the tone Sahajah spoke in and struggled more. Sahajah suddenly let her
grip on the chain go causing Laqiya to fall to her knees, gasping for breath
and rubbing her bruised neck.

“Can’t have you
dying on me yet pretty.
I need your help destroying the seal of
oblivion.”

“You’re insane. I think I’m
supposed to stop you from doing that.”

“Is it really? Who better to
destroy the seal than the one who made it to begin with?”

“What?”

In a movie, Sahajah would have
tossed back her head and laughed at her stupidity, Laqiya mused. But instead
Lady Sahajah bent down to be eyelevel with her, putting a hand on Laqiya’s
cheek, almost endearing.

“Don’t you understand silly girl?
Didn’t you ever wonder why I never personally went after you? I wanted you to
come to me. I wanted you to find the staff pieces and think you could do
something to stop me. I even let you find the last staff piece, as if I didn’t
know where it was the whole time because I needed you.”

“What are you talking about?”
Laqiya asked still struggling not to pass out.

“We all know that you can’t control
your powers without your staff and if the past was anything to go by, I knew you’d
come looking for the exact thing that would help you tame them, just like you
did when this staff was created for you,” Sahajah explained.

“You mean this was all a ploy,”
Laqiya asked.

“Of course it was. I need you to
destroy the seal of oblivion and what better way to draw you onto my turf?”
Sahajah said as she grabbed Laqiya by the chin. “Now I know you remember
Sayyida. Call oblivion here and shatter the seal.”

Laqiya slapped Sahajah’s hand away.

“Are you crazy?”

Shahajah shrugged, and stood up. “Probably,
but you have no choice. All your friends are on my turf, in my castle. You led
them right into danger. You refuse, I kill them all, and you have to live with
the guilt. So go ahead, take your precious staff piece,” Sahajah said to her.
“You have nowhere to go.”

Laqiya was stuck between a rock and
a hard place. Either way, she lost. So she chose the lesser of two evils. She
reached over and grabbed the staff piece, calling for the force inside of her
that guided her thus far. She had no clue how to call forth oblivion, but that
force, whatever it was, did.

“Oblivion,” she whispered. “I call
forth oblivion.”

All the shadows of the room seemed
to draw themselves together, creating a blanket of darkness around the room
that even blocked out the moonlight coming in from the window. Laqiya hadn’t
expected it to work at all though. It had been so simple. No fancy ritual, no
incantations, no fancy spell work and movements, she mused. It had just been
simple words, intention, and the will to not let anyone die because she
couldn’t do her part. That had been simple, but Laqiya didn’t know where to
begin when it came to shattering the seal.

“Now what?”
Laqiya asked

“I think you know what to do,”
Sahajah said.

Laqiya looked down at her staff
piece and asked for a way, but it wouldn’t come to her. Her heart wasn’t in it.
She had hoped that by the time she summoned oblivion something would have come
to her.

“Well?” Sahajah asked.
“Your friends or the seal.”

“What makes you so sure I’ll
destroy the seal? What if I let you kill them?” Laqiya asked.

Sahajah laughed and ran her hand
through Laqiya’s hair.

“Oh Sayyida.
If there’s one thing I know about you, I know that one of your most annoying
weaknesses is your compassion. You don’t like the thought of being alone, do you?
You don’t want them to die?” Sahajah asked.

Laqiya looked over the where Adria
was on the ground. The way she saw it, they were going to die anyway. They were
going to die anyway… Fight or flight, as (she grimaced) her wayward dad would
say. Fighting obviously wasn’t an option, not completely anyway. But the way
she saw it, shattering the seal would only be putting off their deaths. She had
no doubt that Sahajah planned to kill her either way or at least the Tyrant
would. She closed her eyes and silently prayed that just this once, her powers
would help her. Then she opened her amber eyes and then an invisible force
threw Sahajah across the room. The power Laqiya couldn’t control exploded from
her, staff piece glowing violently in her hands. She threw herself on top of
Adria as oblivion faded and the top part of the tower collapsed down on them,
exposing them to the dark outside.

Somehow managing not to get buried
under the stone, Laqiya got up and dragged Adria to her feet, yelling for the
girl to wake up and hoping that Sahajah would be stunned just long enough for
the two to get away. She found a hole in the remaining piece of wall that used
to hold the door and started running down the spiral stairs while supporting
Adria and stuffing the last staff piece in her bag. In the future, she mused,
when she was an adult (if she made it that far) she’d probably wonder how she
had managed to get her and Adria down the steps without tripping and falling.

“Where are we going?’ Adria asked
as she began to walk on her own down the hall.

“Doing a pick up and then busting
out of here,” Laqiya explained.

“You make it sound like we’re
busting out of prison.”

“Honestly, I think breaking out of
prison would be easier.”

They ran into Isis and Sakura who
were finally making their way to them.

“What happened?” Isis asked. “We
heard you guys.”

“I’ll explain later. We have to
move,” Laqiya said pulling Isis away from the tower.

“What?” Isis asked.

“Lady Sahajah planned to get me
here. She wanted us on her turf so she could force me into shattering the seal
of oblivion. She never wanted the staff pieces. She wanted me. She let us find
the staff pieces and left us alone on purpose,” Laqiya said running back
towards the armory.

“Seems like a
waste doesn’t it.
She could have just kidnapped you,” Sakura said, her
voice hoarse from her earlier tears.

“No she couldn’t have. It had to be
with you all here or she wouldn’t have any leverage on me,” Laqiya said as they
came upon the armory door and without waiting to see what was going on made her
way back inside.

The room was in shambles. There
were tears in the wall, anything glass was shattered, the floor unleveled, and
it showed signs of water damage. But even more disturbing was that the room was
empty. Neither the Anaxars or Laqiya’s guardians were there.

“What did they do in here?” Adria
asked as they carefully made their way across the room avoiding fallen weapons
and large pieces of glass.

“That had to be one hell of a
fight,” Isis said. “Part of me wishes I hadn’t missed it.”

“But where are they?” Laqiya asked.
“Where’d they go?”

“Well since they aren’t here, maybe
someone got the upper hand,” Adria suggested.

It was Sakura who shook her head.
“Then why aren’t they looking for us. If either side had won they would have
come after us. We haven’t seen the Anaxars or Nightshield, Plainshield, and
Chasity.”

“Then that means we have to find
them,” Laqiya said as they went back out the armory and into the hall.

“You know,” Adria said as they ran
back the way they had first come. “It would seem like Sahajah would have caught
up to us by now. She couldn’t have been that far behind us.”

“You’re right,” Isis said chancing
a glance behind her. “She should have caught up by now.”

“Let’s not think about why she
hasn’t,” Sakura said getting ahead of Laqiya.

Their trip seemed faster this time
around, not as long as it had taken to get to the northern tower in the first
place.

They got back out to the doors
leading to the courtyard, and as they crossed it to go back inside the castle,
Adria said, “We have to go back to the gardens for the veil, don’t we? That’s
where we landed.”

Isis simply nodded.

“We’re leaving without Nightshield,
Plainshield, and Chasity Pearl?” Sakura asked.

Laqiya shook her head. “They’re already
outside, back in the garden.”

“The garden that
just attacked us?”
Sakura asked and then shook her head.
“No way.
Just think about all this. They disappeared.
Laqiya, this is a trap.”

Laqiya already knew that, but the
entire situation had been a trap from the jump. They were in the midst of it,
so why worry about walking further into it? Walking further into the trap was
the only way out of it at this point. That force that had been inside her the
whole time was steadily growing stronger, and it was telling her that there was
no more running, no more lucky escapes. They had to face Lady Sahajah head on.

“Laqiya,” Isis said snapping her
out her thoughts.

“I know it’s a trap,” she finally
admitted. “This entire situation was a trap to get us all here, but how are we
going to get out of it if we don’t spring the trap. It’s our only way out now.
We have to face Sahajah and oblivion and end this… I have to end this. You all
don’t have to face her. You all leave and—”

“Don’t even finish that train of
thought,” Isis warned in a tone of finality as she started down the hall behind
the stairs they had first come down from. It led to two arched doorways that
took them back outside, the entrance they had been trying to find before they
were attacked in the garden.

Figuring that they were on the west
side of the palace, they went left back around to the south end of the castle
grounds. They ended up on the side of the garden they had been trying to get to
before they had been attacked earlier and so had to walk a good ways through it
before they would come upon where the veil had dropped them. Laqiya was very
aware that all three girls seemed to be clinging to her. Sakura had grabbed her
arm, Adria was almost on her back, and Isis stuck close to her other side. She didn’t
blame them though. Part of her was glad to have them so close.

They came upon the veil with no
consequence, but Laqiya had that prickly feeling at the back of her neck again
as she looked around, not seeing anyone there. Her eyes landed on an area just
at the end of the garden that seemed a little distorted as they began to
approach the stone wall that bordered the castle.

“They went through the veil,”
Laqiya concluded.

“How do you know?” Sakura asked.

Laqiya shrugged. She instinctively
knew a lot of things she didn’t think she should know that night or even over
the last six months. She couldn’t explain the whisper. It was like a whisper of
the past, the past life she had before warning her from experience.

“We have to go back through the
veil,” Laqiya said pointing to the wall as she walked towards it without
waiting for an answer.

“You can’t go first,” Isis said
pushing Laqiya behind her. “I’ll go first, then Sakura, then you and then
Adria. Everyone got that?

The other three nodded, and Laqiya
couldn’t help but roll her eyes at them. Nightshield would be proud that they
had apparently learned something about being protective of her. Isis went
first, followed by Sakura and then Laqiya glanced back at Adria as though to
assure that she would be fine. Adria nodded, and Laqiya went through the veil.

She ended up back on the steps and
was immediately struck by how quiet it was in the basement…
Too
quiet.

“What’s going on?” Adria asked
coming up behind her.

“It’s quiet,” Laqiya pointed out before
yelling, “Isis.
Sakura.”

“Laqiya run awa—” Sakura’s warning
was cut off by her scream.

Both Adria and Laqiya flew forward,
Adria into a tangled weave of vines on the ground, looking something like
quicksand, a mix of all three Anaxars’ powers, while Laqiya flew into Sahajah’s
awaiting grasp.

“You always were very predictable,”
said the dark mistress.

“I could say the same for you,”
Laqiya said as she relaxed in the woman’s grasp hoping, maybe in vain, that the
woman might let her guard down.

“No need to be sarcastic my old
friend,” Sahajah said as she thrust the girl forward to where the woman had
summoned oblivion herself.

Laqiya hadn’t been able to get a
good look at the seal before and had only seen blackness and crackles of energy
that no doubt represented the seal, but upon closer inspection she saw shadows
swirling about and heard faint whispers; whispers of revenge.

“Break the seal you cast over
oblivion little one,” Sahajah demanded. “The Tyrant’s going to get out anyway,
so why delay the inevitable?”

“You talk as if the Tyrant isn’t
evil, as though he hasn’t done anything wrong,” Laqiya pointed out trying to
delay what seemed like the inevitable, trying to figure a way out.

“He hasn’t,” Sahajah said. “Before
you came along and disrupted everything, there was order, peace—”

“And oppression and suffering,”
Laqiya said staring at oblivion.