I do.” Forrester wished that Diana would do more than treat him like a pal. She was a remarkably beautiful woman, if you liked the type, and Forrester liked virtually any type.
Now, success appeared to be within his grasp. But it did seem an odd time to bring the subject up. Oh, well, he thought, maybe she was just trying to cheer him up and had picked this way of doing it.
It worked, too, he told himself happily.
He cleared his throat. “Where?”
Diana stared. “Where?”
“That’s right,” Forrester said. Something was going wrong but he couldn’t discover what it was. “The tenting.”
“Oh,” Diana said. “Right here. Now. Raises the spirits.”
“I should say it does!” Forrester agreed enthusiastically. “But after all—right here—”
“Don’t worry about it, kid. Nobody will hear you.”
“Hear me?”
“Anyway, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of people do it when they feel low.”
“I’ll bet they do,” Forrester said. “But it’s different with you and me.”
“Me?” Diana said. “What do I have to do with it? I just told you—”
“Well, sure. And here and now is as good a time and place as any.”
Diana stepped back a pace. “Okay, let’s hear it. Sing!”
“Sing? You mean I have to sing for my—”
“I’ll join you,” Diana said.
Forrester nodded. He was beginning to get confused. “You’d better,” he said.
“Tenting tonight on the old camp grounds,” she sang. “Now come on.”
Forrester coughed. “Oh,” he said. “Sing.”
“Sure,” Diana said, and they went through the song together. “How about another chorus?” she asked.
“It’s all right, Diana,” Forrester said, knowing she preferred the name to her Greek one of Artemis. “I feel fine now.”
“Well,” Diana said in a disappointed voice, “all right.”
What surprised Forrester most was that he did feel fine. All the Gods had helped him in the past several months, but Diana had been especially helpful. As a forest Goddess, and as Protectress of the Night, she’d been able to tell him a lot about how an orgy was arranged. He had often wished that she would teach by example, but now, he discovered, it was too late for wishing.
She was, he told himself with only faint regret, just like a sister to him. Or even a brother.
“I guess everything will be okay,” he said. “Won’t it?”
Diana clapped him on the back. “You’re going to be great. Just go out there and show ’em what kind of a God you are.”
“But what kind of a God am I?”
“Just keep cool, kid. You won’t fail me—I know it.”
“I’ll try,” Forrester said. “Only I’m getting nervous just sitting around here. I wish we could go out and stroll around; we’ve got plenty of time, anyhow.”
Diana nodded. “It’s ten minutes yet before the Procession starts. I suppose we might as well take a look around, kid, if it makes you feel better.”
“It might.”
“Fine, then. But how do you want to go?”
Forrester blinked. “How?”
“Invisibility,” Diana said, “or incognito?”
“Oh,” Forrester said. Then he added: “You’re asking me?”
“Of course I am, kid. Now, look: this is your celebration, remember? You’re Dionysus. Got it? Even in my presence, you act the part now. You ought to know that.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“Keep this in mind. These people haven’t had a Sabbatical Bacchanal in seven years. Every seven years they get to see their God—and this year you’re it. Right?”
“I guess so. But—”
“No buts,” Diana said. “You’re the boss and they’re your worshippers. That’s all there is to it. Now, you’ve got to make up your mind. What’ll it be?”
Forrester thought. “Well,” he said at last, “I guess it had better be incognito. With this crowd, there’s too much likelihood of getting bumped into if we’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 positions at regularly spaced intervals in the procession. The remaining twenty-five stayed behind, ready to accompany Dionysus himself at the tail of the parade.
Each of the other Gods was represented by a special detachment of ten Myrmidons, each contingent wearing the distinctive shoulder patch of the God it served: the thunderbolt of Zeus, the blazing sun of Apollo, the pipes of Pan, the sword of Mars, the hammer of Vulcan, the poppy of Morpheus, the winged foot of Mercury, the trident of Neptune, the cerberus of Pluto, the peacock of Hera, the owl of Athena, the dove of Venus, the crescent of Diana, and the sprig of wheat that represented Mother Ceres. The Myrmidons grinned in expectation