Chapter Seven
Little did either Mozenrath or Aladdin know, but "someone" else was watching the whole scene, too. Carpet, feeling he needed to keep an "eye" on his friends, had been following them from a safe distance. Once he had seen Genie, Iago, and Abu become captured, he flew away to find help. The sultan was in his study, looking over a stack of papers with a bored expression on his face. Carpet darted into the room in panic and whirled around the old man in a frenzy.
Sultan didn't know what Carpet was trying to tell him, so Carpet literally picked Sultan up and tossed him on top and took off toward the storage room where Aladdin was hiding out. On the way there, however, as they were passing through the throne room, Sultan hollered, "Stop!"
To his amazement and confusion, Aladdin was sitting on the throne. His arms were crossed across his chest, and as Sultan neared the young man, he noticed that Aladdin's eyes were completely black.
"My boy," began the sultan in alarm, "are you all right?"
Aladdin remained silent, sitting there with a vacant expression on his face, staring straight ahead. Sultan was now standing right in front of Aladdin, but Aladdin wasn't looking at Sultan; he was looking through him and past him. Chills went down the old man's spine, and he shuttered.
"Carpet," he whispered, leaning toward the rug, "is this what you were trying to tell me?"
Carpet nodded "yes" and tried to pull Sultan away from Aladdin, but Sultan was too transfixed on Aladdin's eyes to comply. He leaned forward, walking a few steps closer to Aladdin.
"Dear boy, where are your friends? Where is my daughter?"
Nothing.
"Aladdin," he said more firmly, "tell me. Where is Jasmine?"
Suddenly, Aladdin lashed out and released a stream of red light from his hand. The sultan let out a cry of panic, but it was of little use. "You wanna see your precious daughter alive?" Aladdin barked. "Then you will do everything I tell you to!"
Aladdin was too busy paying attention to the sultan to notice Carpet fly away.
Meanwhile, locked away in the dungeon beneath the palace, Genie, Iago, and Abu were chained up in a combination of real chains and magical chains. Jasmine was lying on the floor with her arms cuffed behind her back. Everyone was too frightened to dare utter a word, and they looked with desperation at the helpless princess as she lay sprawled across the cold, damp stone floor.
A weak groan suddenly came from her mouth, and a few seconds later, her eyes opened. Her eyesight was blurry, and it took a couple of minutes before she was able to see where she was. The first thing she saw was her friends, all of them bound like she was, only they had a strange red glow coming off them.
"Guys?" she asked weakly. "What's going on?"
"We're trapped in the dungeon, Jas," replied Genie.
"But who put us here?" she asked.
"Aladdin," Genie said sadly. "Don't you remember anything, Jas?"
Her mind was spinning, and her head hurt. She could feel a rush of warmth coming over her, and she sighed. "No, I don't remember anything..."
As she trailed off, a jingle of keys was heard outside the cell's door. They heard the turning of the key in the door, and expressions of fear flooded their faces. Was Aladdin back for them?
But it wasn't Aladdin who stood at the stairs in the entrance way. It was-
"Carpet!" they all exclaimed in a delighted surprise.
"Oh, Rugman! You're awesome!" Genie exclaimed.
Carpet went directly over to Jasmine and removed the cuffs from her hands. Once Jasmine's hands were free, she headed toward Genie and tried to remove the chains from him. The moment she touched him, though, a powerful bolt of energy sent her flying across the room. Carpet caught her right before she hit the stone wall.
"It looks like I can't release you," she stated. "Who put these magical shackles on you?"
"Al did," Genie replied.
"Aladdin has magic?!" Jasmine exclaimed. "But how is that possible?"
"Yeah, you're really up on the latest, aren't you?" Iago remarked sarcastically. "Princess, your Aladdin has been spouting off magical antics like he's Mozy or somethin.'"
"Mozenrath!" Jasmine exclaimed. "That's it! He's got to be the one behind this..."
Everyone else looked at each other and then back at her. There were no objections. "Who else would it be?" she continued.
"I think you're right, Jas," Genie said. "See, the bird and I were discussing this earlier. We think Al was infected with a magical spell somehow."
Jasmine thought for a minute. Everything came rushing back to her then: the night of the party, Aladdin's nasty remarks, how she was abducted earlier that day...
"The party last night, that was when with all started," she muttered. "Remember how he started to not feel well? And before I asked him to dance with me, we were eating, and if I recall correctly, I think Aladdin said something about his drink tasting strange."
"The drink!" the others exclaimed.
"Mozenrath must has put something in Aladdin's drink," Jasmine reasoned. "I've got to face Mozenrath myself and make him stop this at once."
"But, Jas," Genie pleaded, "you can't face Wizard Boy alone!"
"I'll have Carpet," she tried to convince him. "Besides, there's no other option. We can't face Aladdin. We need to go to the source of this whole thing, and that means going to Mozenrath."
"No, Jasmine!" Genie replied. "You're not going alone!"
"Then what am I supposed to do?" she begged. "Stay here and just let Aladdin win? Let Mozenrath win?"
"Uh, if I can interrupt for a sec here," Iago cut in.
"What?" Jasmine and Genie both asked.
"Jasmine, if you go to Jafar's lab, there's a bottle with orange liquid in it sitting on the far left end of the potions table. It'll release us from the magical shackles."
Jasmine looked at Iago questioningly but nodded. She left them in the dungeon and headed for Jafar's lab. Luckily, it wasn't a far trip for her to take. As she rode on Carpet through the secret passage to the lab, she saw the bottle that Iago had told her about. Even though she hated going in this place and hated it even more that Iago had once worked for Jafar, she had to admit that the parrot's knowledge of magic was useful at times. Wasting no time, she grabbed the bottle and headed back for the dungeon.
"That was fast," Iago remarked.
"It was right where you said it would be," Jasmine couldn't help but to smile.
She opened the bottle and poured a little bit of its contents on to each of her friends. The red glow instantly faded, leaving only the real chains. With a few quick turns of a key, they were free. As they left the palace, a horrible thought crossed Jasmine's mind.
"Father!" she gasped. "Carpet, we have to head back and get Father!"
Carpet turned around and flew into the palace. They cautiously looked in his study and chambers, but he wasn't in there. As they neared the end of the hallway that led into the throne room, Jasmine tried not to gasp as she saw Aladdin and her father together. The old man was bound in the same red magical shackles as the others had been, and Aladdin was threatening the poor sultan for the life of his daughter if he continued to refuse Aladdin's demands. Out of the corner of his eye, Sultan glanced over and saw Jasmine peeking around the corner. Seeing her alive and unharmed brought a glimmer of hope to him, and knowing Aladdin couldn't hurt her now, he held out.
"We can't go in there," Genie said. "Aladdin will surely see us."
"You're right," replied Jasmine. "Father saw me, so I feel a little better...but what if Aladdin hurts him while we're chasing after Mozenrath?"
"Not a problem!" yelled a voice from behind them.
Standing not more than twenty feet behind them was Mozenrath.