Memory-Keepers

Overview

The Memory-Keepers are among the Preservers of the Frozen Moment: beings that store the memories of the dead in shards of crystal, so that they are held and not lost. The spirits that record those who drink at an Ageless Spring, the Spring-Chroniclers, are other beings, though travellers often give them this name.

Appearance

A Memory-Keeper is seen as a slender figure of frosted crystal, about the height of a man, with long, careful hands, moving among fields of clear shards that stand in the ice like a forest of glass. Each shard holds a faint, moving light, and when the Memory-Keeper touches one, a moment shows inside it: a face, a room, a voice heard faintly. Its own face is smooth and pale, its eyes half-closed. It moves slowly and without a sound, and the shards chime softly as it passes.

Habitat and Range

They tend the crystal fields of the Frozen Moment.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Memory-Keeper gathers and keeps. On the Frozen Moment it takes the memories of the dead, sets each in a shard, and tends the shards so that nothing in them fades. It does not refuse visitors who come to look, and it does not let them take what it keeps.

Abilities

It holds memory in crystal, unchanging, and can show what a shard holds to whoever it chooses.

Uses and Dangers

Travellers come to the Frozen Moment hoping to see a memory of their dead, and the Memory-Keepers are why. They do no harm.

Lore and Belief

Some mourners on Caeldon keep a shard of clear crystal from the grave of their dead and say it holds a memory; whether any such shard came from the Frozen Moment is not known. The faithful record of what was belongs, in the end, to the Eternal Record, and scholars argue how much of a memory the Memory-Keepers truly keep.

Where It Appears

• The Frozen Moment
• Writers' Guide: The Planes