There was a crowd of people following us. They glared at us darkly and muttered to themselves. I wanted very badly to believe we were not the focus of their attention, but it was obvious that was not the case. They were clearly following us, and gathering members as they went.
“We’re being followed, Aahz!” I whispered.
“Hey, kid. I pointed them out to you, remember?”
“But why are they following us? What do they want?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure, of course, but I’d guess it has something to do with our disguises.”
I snuck another glance at the crowd. The interest in us did not seem to be lessening at all. If anything, the crowd was even bigger and looked even angrier. Terrific.
“Say, Aahz?” I whispered.
“Yeah, kid?”
“If they’re after us because of our disguises, why don’t we just change back?”
“Bad plan, kid. I’d rather run the risk of them having some kind of grudge against the people we’re impersonating than facing up to the consequences if they found out we were magicians.”
“So what do we do?”
“We keep walking and hope we run into a patrol of soldiers that can offer us some protection.”
A fist-sized rock thudded into the street ahead of us, presumably thrown by one of the people following us.
“… or. …” Aahz revised hastily, “we can stop right now and find out what this is all about.”
“We could run,” I suggested hopefully, but Aahz was already acting on his earlier suggestion.
He stopped abruptly and spun on his heel to face the crowd.
“What is the meaning of this?” he roared at the advancing multitude.