e're invisible. Right?"

Diana grinned. "That's the boy! You're thinking straight now!"

Forrester had the sudden feeling that he had just passed another test.
But he didn't quite dare ask about it "All right," he said instead.
"Let's go."

He put his mind to work concentrating on the special faculties that his
demi-God power gave him. His face began to change. He looked less and
less like Dionysus as the seconds went by, and more and more like
William Forrester. At the same time, the golden aura around his body
began to fade. After a few minutes he looked like William Forrester
completely, a nice enough guy but pretty much of a nonentity.

Diana, with the greater power of a true Goddess, achieved the same sort
of result almost instantly. Her aura was gone and the sparkle had left
her eyes. Her brown hair looked a little mousy now, and her face was
merely pretty instead of being gloriously beautiful.

"Just one thing," Forrester said. "We'd better make ourselves invisible
just to leave the Temple. Somebody might suspect we weren't ordinary
people at all."

"Right again," Diana smiled. She nodded her head and blinked out.

Forrester could still see a cloudy outline of her in the room, but he
knew that was because he was a demi-God, with special powers. An
ordinary mortal, he knew, would see nothing at all.

He followed her into invisibility and walked out the back door of the
Temple-on-the-Green. The door was open and two Temple Myrmidons, wearing
the golden grape-clusters of Dionysus on their shoulder patches, stood
outside the door. Neither of them saw Forrester and Diana leave.

* * * * *

Three minutes later, they were standing near the doorway of the Temple,
watching the preparations for the Grand Procession. The fifty priests of
Dionysus gathered there while the enormous crowd pushed and shoved to
get a better view of the ritual. The sacrifice of the first fruits had
been completed, and now, at the door of the Temple, each of the fifty
priests filled a chalice from a huge hogshead of purple wine.

They chanted a prayer in unison and spilled half the wine on the ground
as a libation. Then they lifted the chalices to their lips and drank,
finishing the other half in one long motion.

The chalices were set down, and a cheer rose from the crowd.

The Bacchanal had begun!

The priests separated into two equal groups. Twenty-five of them started
northward, marching to their