"Quit worrying so much about rights and duties, Merel," Barak said. "Just go away and leave me alone."
"My Lord was quite insistent about certain rights and duties on the night of his return to Val Alorn," she said. "Not even the locked door of my bedchamber was enough to curb his insistence."
"All right," Barak said, Hushing slightly. "I'm sorry about that. I hoped that things might have changed between us. I was wrong. I won't bother you again."
"Bother, my Lord?" she said. "A duty is not a bother. A good wife is obliged to submit whenever her husband requires it of her - no matter how drunk or brutal he may be when he comes to her bed. No one will ever be able to accuse me of laxity in that regard."
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Barak accused.
"Enjoying what, my Lord?" Her voice was light, but there was a cutting edge to it.
"What do you want, Merel?" Barak demanded bluntly.
"I want to serve my Lord in his illness," she said. "I want to care for him and watch the progress of his disease-each symptom as it appears."
"Do you hate me that much?" Barak asked with heavy contempt. "Be careful, Merel. I might take it into my head to insist that you stay with me. How would you like that? How would you like to be locked in this room with a raging beast?"
"If you grow unmanageable, my Lord, I can always have you chained to the wall," she suggested, meeting his enraged glare with cool unconcern.
"Barak," Garion said uncomfortably, "I have to talk to you."
"Not now, Garion," Barak snapped.
"It's important. There's a spy in the palace."
"A spy-",
"A man in a green cloak," Garion said. "I've seen him several times."
"Many men wear green cloaks," Lady Merel said.
"Stay out of this, Merel," Barak said. He turned to Garion. "What makes you think he's a spy?"
"I saw him again this morning," Garion said, "and I followed him. He was sneaking along a corridor that nobody seems to use. It passes above the hall where the kings are meeting with Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol. He could hear every word they said."
"How do you know what he could hear?" Merel asked, her eyes narrowing.
"I was up there too," Garion said. "I hid not far from him, and I could hear them myself - almost as if I were in the same room with them."
"What does he look like?" Barak asked.
"He has sandy-colored hair," Garion said, "and a beard and, as I said, he wears a green cloak. I saw him the day we went down to look at your ship. He was going into a tavern with a Murgo."
"There aren't any Murgos in Val Alorn," Merel said.
"There's one," Garion said. "I've seen him before. I know who he is." He had to move around the subject carefully. The compulsion not to speak about his dark-robed enemy was as strong as always. Even the hint he had given made his tongue seem stiff and his lips numb.
"Who is he?" Barak demanded.
Garion ignored the question. "And then on the day of the boar hunt I saw him in the forest."
"The Murgo?" Barak asked.
"No. The man in the green cloak. He met some other men there. They talked for a while not far from where I was waiting for the boar to come. They didn't see me."
"`There's nothing suspicious about that," Barak said. "A man can meet with his friends anywhere he likes."
"I don't think they were friends exactly," Garion said. "The one in the green cloak called one of the other men `my Lord,' and that one was giving him orders to get close enough so that he could hear what Mister Wolf and the kings were saying."
"That's more serious," Barak said, seeming to forget his melancholy. "Did they say anything else?"
"The flaxen-haired man wanted to know about us," Garion said. "You, me, Durnik, Silk - all of us."
"Flaxen-colored hair?" Merel asked quickly.
"The one he called `my Lord,' " Garion explained. "He seemed to know about us. He even knew about me."
"Long, pale-colored hair?" Merel demanded. "No beard? A little older than Barak?"
"It couldn't be him," Barak said. "Anheg banished him on pain of death."
"You're a child, Barak," she said. "He'd ignore that if it suited him. I think we'd better tell Anheg about this."
"Do you know him?" Garion asked. "Some of the things he said about Barak weren't very polite."
"I can imagine," Merel said ironically. "Barak was one of those who said that he ought to have his head removed."
Barak was already pulling on his mail shirt.
"Fix your hair," Merel told him in a tone that oddly had no hint of her former rancor in it. "You look like a haystack."
"I can't stop to fool with it now," Barak said impatiently. "Come along, both of you. We'll go to Anheg at once."
There was no time for any further questions, since Garion and Merel almost had to run to keep up with Barak. They swept through the great hall, and startled warriors scrambled out of their way after one look at Barak's face.
"My Lord Barak," one of the guards at the door of the council hall greeted the huge man.
"One side," Barak commanded and flung open the door with a crash. King Anheg looked up, startled at the sudden interruption.
"Welcome, cousin," he began.
"Treason, Anheg!" Barak roared. "The Earl of Jarvik has broken his banishment and set spies on you in your own palace."
"Jarvik?" Anheg said. "He wouldn't dare."
"He dared, all right," Barak said. "He's been seen not far from Val Alorn, and some of his plotting has been overheard."
"Who is this Jarvik?" the Rivan Warder asked.
"An earl I banished last year," Anheg said. "One of his men was stopped, and we found a message on him. The message was to a Murgo in Sendaria, and it gave the details of one of our most secret councils. Jarvik tried to deny that the message was his, even though it had his own seal on it and his strongroom bulged with red gold from the mines of Cthol Murgos. I'd have had his head on a pole, but his wife's a kinswoman of mine and she begged for his life. I banished him to one of his estates on the west coast instead." He looked at Barak. "How did you find out about this?" he asked. "Last I heard, you'd locked yourself in your room and wouldn't talk to anybody."