As the trio stopped on one street corner to catch their breath, Jafar called for Cari, but received no reply. Worried, he rubbed the ring on the middle finger of his left hand and invoked the spell that brought her to him.
With Appolinar Dektros now dead, the spells he had placed upon Cari were dissolving. The power of Jafar’s ring reasserted itself upon her, and she materialized before him, still a little groggy, in a cloud of pink smoke scented of ylang-ylang. “I come at your command, O my master,” she said as she made the ritual salaam. Then, as she remembered she’d last seen him poisoned and lying near death on the palace floor, she smiled and said, “I am pleased to see you made it safely out of the treacherous king’s clutches.”
“Thanks to your quick work,” Jafar said, misinterpretin
