Iago had heard of Amin'Dahmoud. He was reputed to be a very powerful sorceror, possibly even more powerful than his own master Jafar. Iago felt that going into his fortress would be asking for trouble, something that was against his principles. He would return to Jafar, and give him the news that Amin'Dahmoud not only had the fake Jasmine, but apparently the real one as well. He wondered what Amin had transformed the real Jasmine into, and what he would do with the fake, but his curiosity was not strong enough on either point for him to risk his own skin or feathers.
On his flight back to Agrabah, he started thinking about what he would tell Jafar. Jafar had set him to keep an eye on Princess Jim, but he had been supposed to ensure that Jim would search for Aladdin, not go off in search of Jasmine instead. Well, he could always tell Jafar that they had found a lead suggesting that Aladdin might be in Dashun, and that they had been captured by the bandits there. That would only be bending the truth a little.
Twelve hours later, an Iago tired from his long flight was telling Jafar what he had learnt, not forgetting to include the lines: "I failed you, Jafar! If only their hadn't been so many of them I might have fought them off!" Jafar knew perfectly well that Iago was a self-serving coward, but the parrot was useful enough that he was willing to put up with those qualities - at least for now.
"So Amin'Dahmoud has them both, does he?" he said. "He has had the genuine Jasmine for some days, but there has been no ransom demand. Since he is assuredly a good enough sorceror to have found out her identity, that must mean that the satisfaction for him of having a princess as a plaything outweighs the money he could have got for her. They say that the transformation spells he uses are almost impossible to undo, too. Depending on how radical an alteration he has made, even could we manage to get her back she might no longer be marriageable. Of course, if I could only get my hands on that magic lamp then I could get her restored to normal, though perhaps with a rather more pliant personality."
"You already changed one person into her likeness,"Iago pointed out. "Can't you simply do the same again, and then marry the new doppelganger? No-one need be any the wiser."
"I would know the difference, though. It wouldn't be the same. Besides, though the simulacrum would look like Jasmine, she wouldn't have her memories. The Sultan knows his daughter so well, that he would be sure to pick up on any slip that she might make. I didn't tell that Jim boy that, of course."
Sun Nov 25 11:57:55 2001