Snow Queen

Now it was all over the hem of her dress again, kissing the cloth, blubbering its thanks.

Have I ever had any creature abase itself so much to me? She couldn't remember. This is remarkable. She would have to research the archives to see if any other Snow Queen had had such an experience. Truly, this was a reasonable revenge for what it had done to her; she enjoyed it for a moment, then cut it short with an upraised finger and a single command.

“Silence!”

It went as still as a windless day, ironic since it was a wind. It even stopped moving altogether, looking now like a grotesque ice-sculpture clinging to the hem of her gown. She became incongruously aware of how wet and sodden her gown was, with the chill and wet almost all the way up to her knees now. Small wonder the Sammi women wore the dresses and breeches that they did.

“You must give me a piece of yourself,” she said, flatly. “You must give me a piece of your memory, the memory of my summoning you here, of you telling me about Loviatar, and of my agreeing to help you. You will lose that piece forever.”

It hesitated, for to a creature like the North Wind, only imperfectly tied to the world and unable to have possessions as such, its memories were everything. Even bad ones. Its memories were the map to tell it what to do should something like this arise in the future. But it hesitated only for a moment. Then it bowed its head to her. I give my consent.

“Let go of my dress.” When it had released her hem as if the thing burned it, she called up her warming spell and infused it into the velvet. The gown steamed for a moment, drying quickly in the arid air of the heights. With a sigh of satisfaction, she wrapped her magics around herself again like a cloak of power, and prepared another summoning, although this one was not so much a summoning as an invitation. One did not summon a god, even if it was a very small god. That sort of arrogant behavior rather well got one in trouble very quickly.

And she must phrase her invitation in a very different pattern — the chant of the Skald and not the rhyme of the Bard.

Harbinger of storm and battle, black-winged, bright-eyed secret keeper, will you grace me with your presence, swift all-seeing Memory-holder?

She knew that the North Wind could hear her; his eyes widened as he realized what she had meant. It was not possible for him to become more deferential, but he certainly became quieter. They waited. Presently, a distant, mocking sound echoed across the snowfields and a black speck appeared in the sky. The speck grew larger and showed itself to be a bird. A great, black bird.

A Raven. But no ordinary Raven, as she and the North Wind both knew. This was a very special bird, one of a pair — they did not “belong” to the being that they aided, but they served as his eyes and ears on all of the world that gave him worship and regard. Aleksia stretched out her arm as the Raven approached, and it landed heavily, talons biting into the fur and velvet of her gown and coat. “Greetings, Munin,” she said, bowing her head to him. “I thank you for your attendance.”

'Quork', said the Raven derisively, then made a chuckling sound as it looked down on the trembling North Wind. There was no doubt that Munin was amused to see the North Wind in this state. Then again, in the past, the Wind had probably tossed the Raven all over the sky just for the malicious amusement of it. Small gods were not powerless, but their powers were very narrow; it was unlikely that Munin had any means of retaliation against insult by the Wind — until now.

“Indeed.” Again, she bowed her head. “I crave a boon and grant you a gift with one and the same act. We give to you a piece of memory, this creature and I. This is a piece, not for keeping, but for your own devouring. Not for the One-eyed, but for you. Not for sharing, but for consuming. You will, however, need to it with great care. No one must be able to tell that the North Wind's memory was tampered with. I know that you, and only you, have the skill to do this. Do you consent to this?”

She had just offered the Raven called Memory something that he rarely got — for it was his duty, his function, to serve as the repository for the memories of the One-eyed Father-God of the Skandians. It was his duty to whisper those memories into the One-eyed's ear when they were needed, as it was the duty of his brother Raven to read the thoughts of mortals and immortals and whisper those into the One-eyed's other ear. And yet, Munin yearned to consume those memories; they were, for him, the same as the flesh of the fallen for the lesser Ravens of the earth. Only rarely was he granted such a treat. And this! It was the memory of a creature not mortal at all! Such a feast as he had not been presented with in — surely a hundred years.

Ravens are by their nature, greedy, even demigods in the shape of a Raven. So The Tradition arranged things; the outward appearance dictated the inner self. And having been offered such a thing, he could not resist it. 'Quork! Qwa, qwa, qwa!' he assented, head and shoulders bobbing with eagerness.

“Then go, feast, and work with skill upon this creature's mind.” She held her arm out and he bounced from it to the North Wind's shoulder. “You may take the memory from the moment he left the Wise Woman Annuka and her daughter-to-be until the moment you and I both leave him. Only this much, and no more — but you will find it flavorful with fear, I think, and with the echoes of magic.”

Inside, she was feeling as alive and excited as she had ever been. This was all new ground she was breaking here, using her knowledge of the creatures of the North and all that they stood for. Rarely did a Godmother ever get to forge whole new paths, even small ones! It was as hard now to keep her icy demeanor as it had been when she was livid with anger.

'Gahhh!' said Munin with relish, regarded the North Wind with a shining black eye, then quick as a thought, stabbed his huge black beak into the North Wind's head. The saberlike, ebony beak plunged fully, encountering no resistance; the Wind's eyes went glassy blank as the Raven worked his will within the Wind's mind.

She turned her back on them both, knowing that the North Wind was safe now. And in the scale of things, both Munin and the Wind owed her, although the Wind would not remember. It didn't matter if the Wind remembered. The Tradition would. She made her way quickly back into her Palace; she had used a great deal of energy calling on Munin, and had been forced to sacrifice her own spells of warmth to do so — that was the cost of forging new ground, the magical power did not come from Traditional magic, but from her own. Swiftly as she moved, she was still growing chilled by the time she reached the little door to the garden, an entryway that could scarcely be seen at all unless you were looking for it, barely more than a rectangular crack in the otherwise seamless white walls of the Palace.

The wave of warmth struck her in the face, forcing her into involuntary relaxation. She felt very weary all at once, as if she had been running for a dozen miles. Then, with a chuckle at herself, she realized that, besides working personal magic, she had certainly been walking for a mile or more out in the heavy snow, if not running. Oh, she was going to ache…and a hot bath was probably in order once she knew that she had done everything that