Black Spring by Alison Croggon Page A

great scar ran across his face from one side to the other, across his nose, as if someone had slashed him with a knife. His eyes were like black obsidian: you could see nothing through them. “Aye, it is the Wizard Ezra,” he said. There was a cold contempt in his voice, although his face was without expression. “Where is your master?”
    “My master is not yet come, as you must know,” said my mother. “And my husband is in the fields.”
    “Will you not ask me in to await their coming?”
    “Nay,” said my mother, and her voice was shaking. I had never seen my mother afraid, and it started a tremble in my own heart. “That I will not. You have no business in this house.”
    The wizard smiled, but there was no mirth in it, and somehow I knew my mother had won the first round. “I know you keep the witch child here,” he said. “And that is an abomination, and of my business.”
    “She lives under the king’s pardon!” said my mother shrilly. “You may not touch a hair of the child’s head, and well you know it!”
    “Maybe. Maybe not. Do not think yourself above the Lore, woman. Nor your brat there.” Here he directed me a look of such venom that I felt myself go cold all the way through, as if the blood in my veins had turned to ice water. I was suddenly terrified and could not move a muscle: I stared back like a rabbit before a fox, my heart pounding, until he turned his gaze away and released me. “I come to deliver a message, is all. On this matter there is truce between the king and the wizards, yes. Take care the truce is observed, else blood is the answer, as it should have been in the beginning.”
    “The truce will be observed, if it is in my power to observe it,” said my mother. “And you may not curse me or mine.”
    “It’s not for you to say what I may or may not do,” said the wizard. “It is a matter for the Lore. It would be well to remember that.” He turned on his heel and strode off without looking back, his boy stumbling after him.
    My mother leaned against the doorpost, breathing hard, watching him all the way down the path and out of sight, and then she scolded me roundly for following her to the door. I said nothing at all, because I had just been frightened out of my wits and I didn’t know why. When we were in the South, some of my friends had scoffed at the northern wizards, claiming they were charlatans who frightened the ignorant and superstitious peasants, but any skepticism I might have felt had vanished in the moment when the Wizard Ezra had looked at me. I remembered the stories of how wizards could turn a man’s bones to water, or his marrow to hot lead, so he would die slowly in twisted agony; those stories no longer seemed far-fetched. When my mother had finished telling me off, I went back to the kitchen and finished peeling the turnips. I was burning with questions, but I knew even then that no one would answer them.

T he master didn’t travel with his household, preferring to avoid the bustle and inconvenience. It was some days before he arrived, and I remember that it rained almost constantly; great thick mists rolled down from the highlands so that sometimes you couldn’t see six steps out of the windows all day, and a little boy herding goats was lost in the plains and frozen to death. Despite the weather, my father spent almost all his time with the livestock to avoid the chaos indoors. I think the rain relieved my mother’s mind, because Lina could not go outside and get into trouble; at the same time it meant we were constantly under her feet. She had so much to do that she was sharp with us, so we tried to keep out of her way.
    Lina was incandescent with impatience to see her father. She flew to the front window every time she heard footsteps or hoofbeats, and every morning she stated that he was definitely coming that day, and every evening she went to bed limp with disappointment, worried that he had become lost in the mist and died of cold,