Raykin's Mirrors

Raykin tripped over his candle lamp, stumbled, and caught his knee on the corner of his bed as the light went out. He gasped, rubbed his leg and hopped across the floor, grabbing at the curtains. The curtain pole detached from the wall, unsteadying him further as he fell into the nightstand. The nightstand tipped and a small collection of precious objects slid off the top.

‘No, please no!’ Raykin said as he watched his only banishment disc roll across the floor, glinting in the moon light, and slip between the floorboards.

He scrabbled around in the semi-darkness searching for his things, placing his binding chain, temptation cards, flightstop chalk and protection charm back in their places. He needed somewhere more secure to keep the rare tools of his dying trade.

Raykin pulled two silver coins and seven copper ones from his pocket. Enough to keep him going for a week or so. He’d buy a box tomorrow, a proper, sturdy box to keep his things in. But tonight, he would try to retrieve the banishment disc. It was too important to lose. Rotten luck. More rotten luck.

Lifting the floorboard would have been easier if he’d been able to find the key to his tool chest, but that may have also been on top of the nightstand. Maybe it wasn’t, he couldn’t remember. Either way, it didn’t present itself to him when he re-lit his candle lamp and searched his shack. After some time feeling under the bed, he came across a crowbar and decided that would do. The board splintered a little as he forced it up and he caught a sliver of wood in one eye. He took great care to rinse it out. 

‘So, did you find it? The disc?’ Saranel asked as she poured him a mug of tea at her kitchen table the next morning.

‘No Mother. It’s gone. I looked until the sun came up and then looked more.’

‘So you’ll have to break more mirrors?’ Saranel shook her head.

‘It’s the only way.’

‘It sounds like your luck is quite bad enough already.’

It was well known in the land of Glaynar that demon hunters were some of the unluckiest men alive. That’s why the calling to become one had been made compulsory before Raykin was born, and also why fewer and fewer experienced hunters were willing to doom other men to the life.

Trapping demons inside mirrors was hard enough, but breaking the mirrors to send the demons back to the underworld made part of the evil rebound onto the hunter in the form of very bad luck.

Various protection charms were rumoured to reduce the effects, but they were expensive and not infallible. Raykin himself wore a silver pendant with a genuine sunsoir flower encased inside. It was the first and last gift his family had managed to afford him, the year he had been called to start his apprenticeship. He had no belief in its ability to help but his family had saved for so long to get it that he wore it to every call.

‘Can you make another disc?’

‘Not until the next full moon, and only then if I can find enough bell flowers. The woods have been stripped of them since their power was discovered. I only just managed to find enough to make the one I had.’

‘I’ve been thinking for a while now, and I understand your doubts, but perhaps today is the day to say something.’

‘Is this another plan to get me out of the calling? You know how it works, I do it for seven years then train an apprentice or I’m exiled.’

‘Many men have opted for exile.’

‘I know. But if everyone gives up who will protect Glaynar from demons?’

‘I was thinking something different this time. I don’t think it breaks any rules.’

‘What?’

‘Is there a law that says you have to break the mirrors?’

‘No, but without a banishing disc how else can I send the spirits back?’

‘Maybe you don’t. Maybe you can store the mirrors. At your Grandmother’s cottage. It’s been empty since she died. You could store them until you can make more discs and then banish the demons when you have the proper tools.’

‘What if someone finds them?’

‘Well, it’s unlikely they will, there’s no reason to go to the north-west since the centaurs moved. And if anyone found them what’s the worst that could happen? They could break them I suppose, but that would just banish the demons.’

‘And result in bad luck for the person –‘

‘The trespasser…you mean the trespasser. And they deserve a bit of bad luck.’

‘But I already have bad luck, it won’t make much difference just avoiding more. My life will still be a mess.’

‘I thought of that too.’ Saranel stood and opened the wooden door behind her. ‘Take a look.’

Raykin peered into the pantry.

‘This is just the start, there are lots of other things we can do.’ His mother said, lifting a small wicker basket from the floor and holding it out to him.

Raykin opened the basket flap to hear a soft mewing sound. Hidden inside was a tiny striped kitten.

‘Oh you don’t believe in all that? Striped cats bringing good luck?’

‘Not just striped, green eyes too! He was the runt of the litter at Frinsham’s farm. I took him before they could drown him. Good luck for both of you! You’ll have to feed him though, I can’t afford to help.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Raykin reluctantly accepted the cat to spare his mother’s feelings.

‘So, I trust you will start rubbing coins in silk when you spend them? Carry a five-leafed bramweed?’ she listed many other superstitions she thought might help and Raykin dutifully agreed to them all.

On his way home Raykin spent two copper coins on milksup for the kitten, rubbing each one with a silk cloth first. He walked slowly through a fallow field and found a five-leafed bramweed which he pressed in his journal. Once home he spun round thrice and stopped, facing due north, before opening the door.

‘I’ll call you Balamar.’ Raykin mustered a sarcastic tone. ‘After the luckiest King there ever was.’ He pulled a chair up to his kitchen table and fed the kitten.

The demon hunter spent the rest of his day following his mother’s orders. He collected discarded horse-shoes from the blacksmith and hung them on his doors. He picked up seed pods from beneath the flugal trees and put them in a bowl before his fireplace. He bought a box to keep his demon hunting tools in, spending two extra copper coins to get one made of snart bone. Finally, when the rainbow appeared over the hill, he saluted it before catching a few drops of coloured rain in his flask to add to his evening bath.

After three days the wavering voice of the town mage came through the cracks of Raykin’s door, accompanied by three solid knocks from his staff.

‘Raykin Gallor. Your services are needed.’

He welcomed the doddering man in.

‘A child within the city walls is possessed by a greth. Her parents are expecting you within the hour. Get your things.’

‘Of course. Is there a mirror in the house?’

‘Yes, a tall one in a wooden frame.’

‘That will work perfectly.’

Raykin collected his snart bone box and stuffed Balamar into his basket so he could carry him. He slipped his five-leafed bramweed into his pocket, his protection charm around his neck, and followed the old man into town.

‘Hanmar! Hanmar! Hanmar!’ Raykin stepped around the girl lying on her straw bed, drawing a capture circle around her with his flightstop chalk as he went.

When the circle was complete, so the greth could not cross over it, he laid his temptation cards in sequence on the floor just inside the chalk line. Then he lined up the mirror, getting the girl’s parents to hold it at the bottom of her bed, angled so she was reflected full-length in it. Raykin took out his long, thin, silver binding chain, looped it loosely around his right hand several times and continued his chant.

‘Hanmar! Hanmar! Hanmar!’

The girl began to writhe and shriek. Her limbs shook, her hair stood on end. As her movements got more violent her body became a blur with an aura of red and black mist.

‘Hanmar! Hanmar! Hanmar!’

Raykin whipped the binding chain through the air, over the child, causing the mist to swirl and mix into a purply-grey. He let out more chain with each pass, biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment.

‘Hanmar! Hanmar! Hanmar!’

The purple mist rose until there was a clear inch between it and the girl. Just when the separation was complete he whipped the binding chain over the child and under the mist, jerking it back so as to flick the end up and around the edge of the aura. The remaining chain unravelled from his hand and the links extended of their own volition, wrapping around the haze. The fog expanded, twisted and shrank, squirming to escape but it was held fast.

‘Hanmar! Hanmar! Hanmar!’

Raykin reached out, took one end of the chain back into his hand, and, with a final whip, flung the fog and the chain towards the mirror. The glass became liquid, pooling in the centre of the mirror before it rushed out to the edges of the frame leaving a gaping void in the middle. As the foggy air hit the mirror the liquid glass spilled back into place and set solid, trapping the demon behind it. Raykin pulled the chain back, looping it round his hand and stopped chanting.

The girl lay drenched in sweat, breathing heavily, her normal colour returning to her cheeks.

‘We have our little Tensil back! How can we repay you?’ the girl’s mother flung her arms around Raykin’s neck.

The town mage arranged payment of three silver pieces before Raykin carried the mirror home, pleased at the lack of mishaps during the proceedings but not willing to attribute this to his mother’s advice. Once back at his shack he leaned the mirror up next to the fireplace. His training dictated that he take it outside, shatter the glass under moonlight and bear witness to the evil spirit corkscrewing into the ground, returning to the underworld. But perhaps his mother was right. Perhaps there was another way.

The mirror stood by the fireplace all night and in the morning Raykin got up, fed Balamar and stared into it, watching the purple mist swirl behind the glass. He then carried the mirror all the way to the north-west corner, to his Grandmother’s cottage, without dropping or even scratching it. Once there he propped it up in the corner of the kitchen, fiddling with its exact position until he was convinced it could not fall. He locked the cottage and bounced home with a smile on his lips.

For months Raykin searched for bell flowers as the stash of mirrors built up in his Grandmother’s cottage. He needed twelve to make a banishment disc, and he estimated one disc would rid him of four demons. Word spread of his new-found ability to perform demon removals without injuring anyone or destroying property and he had become known not only as the luckiest, but also the most popular, demon hunter in Glaynar. Of course Raykin put it down to his developing skill.

By the end of the year he had nearly one hundred mirrors and as many silver pieces stashed away, but only seven bell flowers. Real luck would have led him to a field full of them but no such thing appeared.

Balamar was his constant companion. Now big enough to hunt for himself, but still much smaller than his brothers, the cat frequently brought home juvenile rodents and the odd bird. He followed Raykin to all of his appointments and was a source of confidence, and, perhaps, good fortune.

The nights grew long and the mornings frosty. Balamar, small for a cat, and perhaps a little weak, found hunting more difficult. Raykin always offered him scraps from his plate but the cat refused them, preferring his meals to move. He was growing thin and starting to chase more and more unlikely prey.

Early one Snepsday morning Raykin was busy stashing a catch at his Grandmother’s cottage. His neck was itching, so he removed his protection charm, convinced it was of no help anyway. This latest demon was a particularly irate dranken, captured in an oval mirror just shorter than himself. He had taken to categorising the mirrors by demon type, so that when the time came he could dispose of the most dangerous first. This resulted in a whole collection of dranken mirrors stacked up against each other in the living room. Each one flashed angry lightning out from its glass. Dranken could control the weather, potentially decimating farming lands like Glaynar.

Once the mirror was in place Raykin looked around for his sidekick, but Balamar was not there. He checked every room. Eventually he opened the shutters at the front of the cottage, letting freezing air into the kitchen.

There was Balamar, slinking round a retzil tree, low to the ground, coiled on his haunches, ready to pounce. Raykin looked around for the potential victim of the cat’s impending attack and detected movement in the plenda bush where Balamar was focussed. A flap of wings. Then rustling, then birdsong.

‘Chip pop. Chip pop.’

‘Balamar! Come back. That’s a jemmil, get away.’

Raykin dashed to the door and ran towards the cat, arms outstretched to grab him. But Balamar sprang forward and sank his front claws into the feathered body before closing his jaws around its neck.

‘No! Let it go! You’re even more likely to starve, or worse.’

Raykin grabbed Balamar by the scruff and shook him to release the yellow bird from his teeth, but it was too late, the jemmil fell to the ground, dead.

‘You’ve doomed us both, stupid cat.’

Raykin took a deep breath and shrugged his shoulders, he knew his recent luck was too good to last. But a dead jemmil! Not just bad luck, the wrath of the Gods! He bent down and scooped up the lifeless bird before releasing Balamar. Better to bury the poor thing than let a hungry cat devour it. He dragged his feet back inside.

The spade handle was sticking out from behind a small collection of mirrors, each one glowing hot-gold like a little sun with the simbel demon trapped inside. Raykin lifted the first of the four simbel mirrors. He held his breath as he took the weight in his arms and slowly made a quarter turn to his right, where he thought he could stack it safely against the pile of dranken.

Obscured by the mirror he was holding, he couldn’t see as the closest dranken rocked unsteadily in its oval frame with the pressure exerted by the glowing simbel. Lightning scattered around the room, but that was nothing new, and Raykin continued to lean the simbel backwards. As he released his grip the oval dranken mirror swayed to the left and then back to the right, the top of the oval briefly appearing round the side of the simbel frame. Raykin saw it. He let go of the simbel with one hand and tried to grab the dranken, but it rocked back the other way. He stepped backwards, lost control of both mirrors, and, in his panic, pulled them towards himself. One fell either side of him, crashing to the floor as he covered his eyes. The shattering glass, flashing lightning and glowing lights were overwhelming and Raykin stood stock still waiting for the mayhem to stop.

But it didn’t stop. The top of the dranken frame caught the adjacent stack of retguns that spluttered into life, spitting foul words from their glass prisons. The first retgun fell into a stash of kaymel which were already bubbling and steaming before they shattered. Within a few minutes every mirror in the cottage was broken, reflecting bad luck everywhere. And every demon was released.

Raykin had never broken more than one mirror at a time, and that had been frightening enough. 

The demons gathered, circling each other. A mass of flashing lights, spinning smoke, water droplets, steam, bubbles, obscene words, mist, all combining into one terrifying whirlwind which tore through the internal walls of the cottage. It ripped chunks out of the stonework, crashed furniture to the floor, broke windows, pulled up tiling, and filled the air with dread.

Then they started their devilish corkscrew, boring through the cottage foundations into the Earth. A tornado of nearly a hundred evil spirits, funnelling everything into the centre of its vortex. A cyclone of chaos.

Raykin held on to the edge of the hole that was rapidly developing in the floor. His legs, lifted and flailed out behind him, battered by debris caught up in the demonic storm. Balamar whipped past him, mewing helplessly, claws outstretched, tail spinning wildly. Raykin failed to grab him.

He couldn’t hold on for long. His hands, exhausted from the effort, released their grip and, as he was thrown into the air, the spiralling spirits tunnelled further into the ground, churning up dirt and rocks. Raykin’s eyes filled with dust and splinters, he could no longer see but could feel that he was dropping, falling into the depths.

The spinning demons corkscrewed their way into the ground leaving a torrent of devastation behind them. As the demons returned to their fiery home, the hole to the underworld was plugged with the wreckage from the cottage, but Raykin and Balamar had gone.

A delicate chain with a genuine sunsoir flower, encased in silver, lying on top of a plenda bush, was all that remained.