‘This is my own, my native land’?”
Cupia might not be his native land, but it was his own, the land of his wife and child, the land of which his son was rightful king, the land whose armies he had twice led to victory. And now he had returned to lead them yet again.
Drawing a deep breath of Cupian air into his lungs, Myles raced across the meadow to the shelter of the grove of trees. From that point of vantage he inspected the village. The architecture was undoubtedly Cupian. In fact, its character was so clear he was even able to judge by it just what part of Cupia he was in, for this architecture was typical of the southeastern foothills of the Okarze Mountains, a thousand stads or so north of Kuana, the capital city.
These foothills held, among other spots of interest, Lake Luno, on an island of which he and Lilla had built their country home. And the inhabitants of these mountains had always been intensely loyal to the earth-man, his golden-haired wife, and royal son.
On the outskirts of the village Cabot could see figures moving—figures in white togas with colored edges, figures with tiny vestigial wings projecting from their backs, figures with butterflylike antennae rising from their foreheads. These were Cupians, his own adopted countrymen.
Yet they never would recognize him in his present condition, with shaggy hair, massive beard, and leather tunic, and without the artificial wings and antennae which he had been accustomed to wear among them. Therefore he could not yet reveal himself. He must first restore his appearance to normal and also find and put on one of the small portable radio sets which he had contrived years ago in his laboratories of Mooni, in order to talk with these folk who have neither ears nor voice.
So, turning his back on the alluring village, he made a meal of the green milk of the grazing anks, and then set out to circle the settlement and find a road.
When he did reach the road he recognized it. And now he knew exactly what village that was. For the moment he could not recall its name; but he knew it to be a little town which he and Lilla had often visited, scarcely twenty stads from Luno Castle.
As he strode on toward Luno Castle, his thoughts raced ahead of him, sometimes picturing a happy homecoming with Lilla and Baby Kew standing in the great arched doorway to greet him, and sometimes desolation and destruction with Prince Yuri, the murderer of the baby king, and the kidnaper of Princess Lilla.
What would Myles Cabot find on the beautiful island in Lake Luno?