The Kar-Chee Reign

by Avram Davidson

  “Well told. Short. Anything to add, any of you?”

  None had, until Jow, his face now expressionless, asked, “These two strange creatures — what did they look like?”

  Attempts to describe them were made, but were not successful. Then Carlo, Ren’s oldest son, said, “May I, then? So … so look here….” He took up a stick, broke it with a snap, scratched in the dirt with the now-sharp point of it. “Did what you see … did it look like this? Or like this? Think before you answer, and don’t say it did unless you are quite sure that it did…. Eh?”

  His brothers and the young guest drew in their breaths, hissing. They nodded, lips drawn back from their teeth. And Lors said, pointing, “One of them did look like that — just like that.” He pointed to Carlo’s first sketch-figure, of something thin and somewhat stooping, standing on four thin limbs, with two stout limbs folded aloft. “And the other was like this other, yes, except that in this picture it’s upright, running on two legs … and when we saw it, it was walking, walking on all fours….

  “But it’s them, all right, Carl…. It’s them. It’s them.”

  And he asked the same question his father now asked, voice upon voice. “How did you know?”

  The oldest brother said, “In one of the caves, far, far to the back, up through a crack in the upper part, is a chamber … I think there’s more, even beyond there, but I never dared to look past there … and only once, when I was a boy and playing a game and hiding, I found my way there. But no one else came after me and I grew frightened. I had my fire things with me and I made fire. What I drew here — that’s what I saw on the wall in that chamber. Someone had drawn them there, with lamp-black and green clay mixed with lamp-black. Of course, when I saw them, I was even more afraid than ever, and I got out as fast as I was able. I even left my fire things there. They may still be in there, for all I know…. Anyway, the second I saw those drawings, I felt in my heart that they had to be Devils. It was a long time ago and I never told anyone, but I’ve dreamed of them so often I never forgot them.”

  All was so quiet upon the finish of his words that they could hear one of the llamas protesting in the stock pens. And old Ren said, “Well, now…. You saw paintings when you were a boy, in a sort of secret side-room in one of the caves; and you felt in your heart they must be Devils. Now, today, your younger brothers and some more young ones, they saw — seems clear enough, seems to be true enough — they saw, alive, what you saw drawn. And Tino, he said that what you saw was Devils. So. It seems to me that it’s natural enough, whenever a boy sees something strange and new and frightening, for him to call it Devil. But, after all, we don’t know what these creatures really are. Fear is easily come by.

  “None of you, not even guest Jow, are old enough to remember my rogue uncle, Arno. Everyone was in fear of him, and largely it was because of a tale that nights, when it pleased him, he’d go and change his body into the shape of what they called a half-Devil, a sort of giant cat, all spotted, do you see. I never believed it, never believed any of it. Whichever body he was to die in, they said, he’d turn into the other. So. When news was brought me that he’d died at last, in the caves there, down I went; found him dead enough, and one of his women with him — a miserable thing, she was, fit for him, but she was loyal at least.

  “ ‘Did he die as a man?’ I asked.

  “ ‘As a man,’ she said.

  “ ‘And has he changed his shape yet?’ I asked her.

  “ ‘Not yet,’ she said.

  “So I had him brought out and we watched him, someone always watching him, by day and by night, till be began to moulder. Then I told them and showed them how the tale was nothing but a tale, and we buried him. So. Time passed. Years. And once, looking in some old bales and boxes from his time, Rogue Arno’s, I’ll tell you what it was I came across — it was a pelt, you see, the skin of a sort of giant cat, all spotted. Never I saw such a thing alive, nor don’t know where or when it lived or died. But it was not a Devil, any more than Arno was. It was a strange thing, and easy to fear. He knew it, he dressed himself with it by nights, played upon that fear …”

  The words of old Ren, slowly, softly, calmly spoken, had gradually softened and calmed the mood of most of his listeners. But they had not calmed Jow, who said, shaking fleecy head, “You don’t mean us to think, host Ren, that whoever drew those pictures in the cave, and our boys, today — you don’t mean to have us think that what they saw were men? Men who put on strange hides to frighten us?”

  Ren said, “I don’t know. I didn’t see them. The boys today didn’t see them close, either. I know this: for one thing, if a picture of them was made at the time or before the time that Carl was a boy, then the things the pictures were drawn of were either here then or had been here before then. Nothing happened then to make us fear them, so why should we fear them now? There are, of course there are, strange creatures on land and sea. What of it?”

  Jow had vigorous ideas as to what of it. The land they lived in, he pointed out, was an island, and they knew of — though they had not themselves visited them — other islands to the south and east. But they all knew well enough that this land and those other lands had once formed one great land, long ago, before (he used the common speech-figure which meant long, long ago) — “before the Devils came.”

  “What did they do when they came?” Jow asked. “Didn’t they split the great land apart? Didn’t they sink most of it? Didn’t they hold it under the water to kill the folk, the way you’d hold a kitten under to kill it? No, Ren. No! You say that fear comes easy. True. But so does the fear of fear, I tell you. I’d rather be afraid for nothing, for then, by and by, we’ll find out it’s nothing — if it is nothing — than let danger slip up and find us unaware and unprepared. Wasn’t California sunk, too? Wasn’t the first Rowan my oldfather, too, as well as yours? Ren! Have you forgotten what it was that he said — the same thing as was said by the other oldparents already here:

  “ ‘There is a thin Devil that has four limbs to walk with and two limbs to work with. And there is a thick Devil that walks on four limbs and runs on two: this is the thin Devil’s scout, spy, and dog. And the smell of each is strong, but the thin one’s strench is stronger. The thin Devil is all wicked mind and evil brain; the thick one is that, and teeth and claws as well. Flee before their coming; for the name of the one Devil is Kar-chee and the name of the other Devil is Dragon…’ ”

  • • •

  It was an old man, a net-maker in the days of his strength, and Jow’s near neighbor, who — restless from the thin sleep of old age — had gotten up groaning from his bed before dawn was more than a thin promise on the horizon. First he walked because he could not sleep, next he walked because he had in his mind a certain warm spring which he thought might relieve somewhat his aching bones. Then he walked because he decided he was hungier than he was rheumatic and his intention was to return. And finally he walked and walked because he had gotten well lost. Then he saw what he had seen and hid half a day in terror and risked moving about only because it came to him at last that the terror of night is greater than the terror of day; and so he came upon Jow, off by himself inspecting his bee-hives.

  Jow at first had inclined to disbelieve his frightened babblings, then sent him off home with strong advice to say nothing to anyone else. “I wasn’t convinced he was right,” Jow said later to old Ren; “but I wasn’t convinced he was wrong, either. So I thought I’d take advantage of your thatch-raising, late for that though it was, and come and talk to you about it.”

  Now, his face taut and haggard in the fire- and torch-light, he said, “Flee…. There is nothing else for us to do! Who can fight Devils? We must leave everything behind and sail to the other island, Zonia or Aper or the others. If there is no wind, we must paddle. And if the people there will receive us as we received Rowan, then good — if not, we must fight them and take their land. We must — ”

  Ren sighed and gripped his friend’s knees. “Must. Jow … list
en. ‘Who can fight Devils?’ No one. True enough. But how do you know for sure that we must fight? That we must flee? That the Devils are here to destroy either us or our land? Obviously they are here. Obviously they have been here before — but our land is still here. Isn’t it?”

  Jow nodded, half-reluctant, “half-reassured. “But … Ren … you know … lots of times I warn people against danger and they laugh and say, ‘Nothing has ever happened before.’ And I tell them … listen, Ren … I tell them: ‘Nothing ever happens until the first time it happens …!’ ”

  This was so true as to require no comment. Ren therefore made none and went on, grave and calm as before, “It is dark now and we can do nothing. Stay with us, be our guests. And tomorrow you and I, Jow, you and I will see for ourselves whatever is to be seen. Our boys are good fellows, but they are only boys. Woman!” He got to his feet.

  From beyond the fires came his wife’s voice. “Ren?”

  “Our guests will stay the night. Get things ready for them.” The women visitors broke into louder talk, deploring face-saving … as the relieved note in their voices showed. They did not know what was wrong, but they accepted that they need not know until the men thought fit to tell them. Yet it was a long way back, they were tired, their younger children were sleeping, and they welcomed the invitation to stay.

  In the night Lors awoke to find his father’s right hand on his shoulder, his father’s left hand over his mouth. No word was spoken as they slipped out into the chill night air, the drops of the first dew dripping like the lightest of rains from the trees; the very stars, huge and swollen with lights, seeming themselves to be swimming down upon the earth through a black and liquid sea of night. He followed Ren across the compound to the most distant fire-pit, and there sat down beside him. Warmth still arose in a faint mist. The father took a stick and brushed off the embankment of ashes and blew upon the coals; as they went from gray to red he placed a small twig on them. In the brief half-light, his face shown ruddy and haggard.

  “Lors,” he said — and stopped. He swallowed.

  “Popa?”

  “Lors. Could … It is no disgrace to be mistaken….” His voice was a bare whisper. Lors leaned close to listen. “It would be about the wrongest thing possible to allow so many people to be frightened for an error…. Or for a game…. You would not — Lors? — is it not possible that you are not really sure that you did see what you say? Perhaps you jumped too quickly to conclusions. Perhaps — ”

  Lors put his hand on his father’s knee. “No, Popa. Don’t think that. It’s no game. It’s no error. We did see them. We saw the thing that Carlo drew. We did. We saw them.” His voice, despite his resolution that it would not, trembled. Not so much from fear of what he had seen as from his shock and grief at seeing and hearing his father so shaken. He gave a little sound of anguish as he heard his father moan at his reply, saw him rock back and forth.

  “Popa — there were only two of them! Only two!”

  Barely audibly, old Ren said, through the hand which covered his face, “There will be more. There will be more. There will be — ”

  Lors seized the hand and shook it. “Then we’ll do what Jow said — we’ll leave this land and go where they can’t find us!”

  The hand came away from Ren’s face. His son felt the track of the tears upon it and, try as he would not to, began to weep, himself.

  “Where is there a place where they can’t find us? And if we knew of such a place, how would we get there? In our fishing-canoes? They wouldn’t hold a hundredth-part of the people, boy. Are we to build more? Bark trees and wait for them to dry and cut them and hollow them and season them and prepare provisions — enough for who knows how long a voyage? Will they give us time? Or are we to try and make our escapes in boats of green wood and watch them founder under us? Jow didn’t think of this. He didn’t think!”

  Ren wiped his face. “You see why, Lors? You see why you have to be wrong? Because even if there were the possibility of us all getting away, why? — what for? — to wait in some other island for the Devils to get around to coming for us? To spend the rest of our lives in that fear and then, if we die in our beds, to hand that fear down to our children like an inheritance?”

  His son said, unsteadily, but not without courage, “But what’s the choice? Either we stay and fight, or we turn and we flee. What other choices are there?”

  His father raked the ashes back upon the embers. His voice came from the darkness, thick and dull. “No choice. We can’t stay. We can’t escape. We can’t fight. We have no choices. None. None….” His voice died away. He did not move. Then, slowly, his head sank down upon his knees. But he moved no more than this. And he moved no more.

  Lors stared. He swallowed. He wiped his nose with his hand. He could have sat, himself, or crouched, motionless for hours beside a game trail. But he could not sit still for this. It was horrible. Death was only a theory to him, and the deeds of Devils something he had merely heard of it. His mind could not encompass either his own destruction or the destruction of his land and family and friends. What tore at him now was the incredible and shocking spectacle of his father, that roof-pillar of strength, reduced to tears and to utter despair. This was intolerable. He jumped to his feet, filled with a childish urge to run away and run and run and stay away until he could come back to find everything in order once again, trouble forgotten. Even as he turned to set his feet, and even as he realized how useless and impossible this impulse was, the night vanished in a burst of rose-colored noise which ceased on the instant, leaving him blinded and deafened —

  Again the blaze of ruddy light — his father’s face open and aghast and all the homesite — again the ear-shattering, mind-benumbing noise —

  Again the darkness and the thick, echoing silence.

  From the house came the sound of a woman’s voice, a hooting, ululating, uncontrolled, almost sexual sound. And upon this breakthrough every conceivable human and animal noise followed. The people poured out of the house, stumbling, trampling, crying, calling, shouting, shrieking; children wailing, women wailing, boys trying to assert manhood and courage but betrayed by breaking voices, men demanding to see the faces of their enemies —

  “Earthquake!”

  “Devils!”

  “Attack!”

  “Devils!”

  “Raid!”

  “Devils! Devils!”

  “A volcano in the sea!”

  “Wild men!”

  But, louder, shriller, deeper, more often, more deeply felt because more deeply feared than any of these — again and again and again: “Devils! Devils! Devils!”

  They fell upon their knees, fell and sprawled full-length, stumbled, were knocked down, and they bellowed like the beasts in the pens. And, looking up, they saw two trails of fire across the sky, greater than the greatest meteor, and again came the blast of light and the rose-flambeau of sound, and now, looking upward, in the instant brief as lightning-flash, they saw the huge black hulls of the Devil-ships as they wheeled — blaze! blast! — and circled — blast! blaze! — and wheeled — blazing! blasting! — inward, downward, turning, turning —

  And vanished toward the south in one final smash of sight and sound and staying forever upon the seared eyes, only turning colors, on! off! as the astonished lids sprang down and up and down: blink, blank, red, black, hull, horror, chaos, Kar-chee, dragon, dark, fire, flame, burning light, Devils, Devils, death.

  Daylight came at last, and when the morning mists had cleared away some strange disturbance in the air was seen toward the south, where the black sky-ships had gone.

  This was the morning when Ren and Jow and the other men were to have gone to see for themselves the truth, if any, of the reports of the boys and the doddering oldfather.

  They did not go.

  Nobody went.

  Nobody did anything.

  Now and then a woman, movement automatic, perhaps more in response to habit or an aching breast, thrust her nipple into a tin
y screaming mouth. Older children, not old enough to have quite succumbed as yet to the general paralysis of mind and body, either found food left over or went without. Now and then a groan or a sigh or whimper was heard, a rattling cough, a wordless and toneless murmur; nothing more. The wind spoke and the cattle complained, but nothing else. The very dogs were silent, scarcely bothering to crawl out of the sun. The very songbirds in their twig cages seemed to have caught the contagion and were silent.

  It was close to noon when old Ren’s wife appeared in her doorway. She looked around, made a gesture of dreadful despair. Her hair hung in witchlocks, sluttishly about her pendulous cheeks. She walked with melting strides toward the tiny cages hanging under the eaves of thatch, one by one flung open the tiny doors. The little birds fluttered, but none fluttered out. She opened her mouth and breathed painfully. Then, as though each gesture cost her infinite effort and infinite agony, she reached her hand into every little pen and closed it around each bewildered creature and drew it out and flung it away from her. “Go,” she muttered. “Go … go….”

  When the last of them had been released she looked around her once more, repeated her gesture of horror and hopelessness. For a moment only her expression changed to something approaching bewilderment and she shaded her eyes and peered as though looking for, as though missing something … someone…. The moment did not long last. She melted back into her house. And all therein was silent.

  • • •

  Duro held his crossbow by the butt. He gazed, slack-mouthed, into space. Then his mouth closed, tightened. He swung forward on his knees and lifted the bow as though he were going to smash it into the ground.

  Lors put his hand out. “Don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  The older brother’s face and hand and head did not move much, nor did his eyes. But Duro knew him well enough to understand that an answer existed and would be presently forthcoming. He sank back and waited.

  “Listen,” Lors began after a long while. “When I was on my first overnight hunt, way out in the uplands,” he began, looking straight at his brother, no trace of condescention or rivalry in his voice: equal to equal now; and Duro, for the first time since the trouble began, felt pleasure grow in his heart; “ — you’ve heard me tell of that?”