A Whole New World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,85

lost in the desert, like in the legend.”

Duban looked confused but did as he was told, running his fingers over the design with Aladdin.

“Aha!” Aladdin said, the first one to find the image of the old man with a satchel over his shoulder, all made out of teeny, tiny brown tiles. He placed his fingers on their cracked surface and pushed.

There was a click, and a panel on one of the short walls slipped away to reveal a dark passage.

Aladdin grinned. “Jasmine told me her father was often late to meetings…so he had this installed to get from the banquet hall to here directly!”

Duban gave a low whistle.

They stepped through, carefully shutting the panel behind them. Tiny oil lamps flickered in the distance, just barely lighting a path.

“From here it’s—”

“Who goes there?”

Duban and Aladdin stared at each other, agape. Jasmine had said this was a secret passage. He had assumed that meant it was only known to the sultan and his closest advisers.

Coming forward out of the darkness was a pair of particularly burly guards, scimitars drawn.

“No one is authorized to patrol the secret passages except for me and Ali and our men,” the man on the right growled.

“We just came back from Ali,” Aladdin said quickly. “He had to bring a prisoner down to the dungeons and—”

“Liar. Jafar will hear of this! Impostors!”

Not burly and dumb guards, obviously.

The passage was too close for swordplay; as thieves, Duban and Aladdin weren’t particularly good with scimitars anyway. They dropped the ones that were part of their stolen uniforms and drew their trusty daggers.

The guard on the left didn’t hesitate: he immediately lunged with his scimitar, hoping to skewer Aladdin like a kebab. Aladdin bent over backward, watching its deadly point slice right above his face, where his stomach had been a moment ago.

He snapped back upright before the guard could react and whirled his dagger so it danced over his thumb, then swept his arm out at the last second.

Besides being smarter, this guard was also quicker than the usual ones: his scimitar flicked down sideways and neatly turned aside Aladdin’s blade.

It wasn’t a strong enough blow to knock the dagger out of his hand. Aladdin recovered and jumped up, wedging his feet against the passageway’s walls to hoist himself up and over and land five feet back. At least now he had a little breathing room.

He saw Duban and his own opponent sparring: his friend had two daggers, one in each hand. He used them like a skilled butcher to trap and grab the blade of the other man’s scimitar whenever it came close to him.

Seeing that Duban was doing all right, Aladdin focused on his own battle and let his dagger fly with a neat flick of his wrist.

The guard saw this and tried to deflect the missile but moved just a second too slowly. The handle of his blade only caught the edge of the flying dagger, causing it to spin off target. It still got him on the side of the neck, though. It drew a ragged bloody gash.

The guard barely reacted, flinching with more embarrassment than pain.

He spun his scimitar around and suddenly dove, lunging at Aladdin’s legs.

Not expecting such a fast recovery and immediate offense, Aladdin leapt straight into the air—and then flipped, putting his hands on the guard’s shoulders to vault over him.

The guard immediately spun around to try to face his opponent in this new direction, blade flashing like the deadly fang of a cobra.

But Aladdin was faster and kicked him squarely in the backs of his knees.

The guard went down, hard.

Aladdin made it harder by delivering a roundhouse kick to the guard’s side. As he fell, Aladdin put his hands together and delivered a final chop to the guard’s neck.

By the time he hit the floor, the guard had stopped moving, his unconscious head lolled to the side.

Aladdin spun to help Duban. The other guard was also down.

But so was Duban.

He was lying on top of his opponent and clutching his side.

“Duban?” Aladdin carefully rolled his friend onto his back.

“I’m all right.” Wincing with pain—but not letting himself groan—Duban pushed himself up. He hobbled forward, holding his side with one arm.

“Let’s go.”

Aladdin wanted to argue with him—but couldn’t. They all needed to work together if the plan was to succeed. Besides, it didn’t look like anything would stop Duban from freeing his family.

They hobbled together to the end of the dark passageway. There they slid a panel aside and stepped out into