"Interesting," Jack said. "I don't see that it changes the meaning much."

"No, but you never know what might be significant. Clearly this is a set of instructions for finding the entrance of the vault. Missing even one word might mean that you never find it."

"It seems to me, friend Tharzon, that understanding this puzzle depends on understanding three things: the thirty-seventh, these leaves of autumn, and the summer staircase. I suppose you could add climbing the staircase to that list." Jack took another sip and offered a foamy leer. "Fortunately, I have already divined the meaning of the thirty-seventh."

Tharzon leaned forward, his thick arms planted on the bar. He actually stood on a short runner behind the counter, raising him to Jack's height. "I hate guessing games, Jack. Just tell us."

"The thirty-seventh refers to a superior brandy, the Maidenfire Gold of the year 637 (Dale Reckoning) distilled by Cedrizarun. He was, of course, the master distiller of old Sarbreen. It is supposed to be the most noble spirit ever crafted east of the sea."

"That would be more than seven centuries old," Anders rumbled. "I am sure it was very fine in its day, but none can possibly survive any longer."

"Don't be so sure," Tharzon said. "A human lifetime burns brightly and gutters out in less than a hundred years, but my folk sometimes live to see their fourth century. We contemplate works requiring decades, even centuries, that humans would call impossible. I have seen dwarven spirits two or three centuries old; the Master Distiller might easily have crafted a spirit that might pass decades like a human-wrought brandy would pass years." His eyes grew dark and thoughtful as the dwarf contemplated the notion. "But where would you find such a thing? And how much would it cost? A single bottle might bring a thousand gold crowns-two thousand gold crowns-in the heart of a dwarven kingdom. I cannot imagine where else you would find it."

"I know someone who has a bottle," Jack said. "For the moment, let us assume that we can borrow it when we need it. Why would a seven hundred year old bottle of brandy be at the center of all? What can it mean to this riddle?"

"Where was the inscription found?" Tharzon asked.

"My acquaintance with the expensive taste in liquor took the whole design on this parchment as a rubbing from Cedrizarun's tomb. No, I don't know exactly where that lies yet; again, let's assume that we will be able to gain that knowledge when we need it."

"That is twice now you have assumed that a very difficult obstacle to your plan will be easily overcome," Anders pointed out. "I am not reassured."

"Friend Anders, the boldest plans and the loftiest designs demand a mind that is capable of spanning insuperable difficulties to apprehend the most fantastic rewards." Jack indulged himself in another draught of the ale. "An impossibly rich prize is, by its nature, impossible to obtain, so therefore the prize that is almost impossibly rich is therefore almost impossibly difficult. And if something is almost impossible, well, that means that it is really possible but simply damned hard. Let us not turn away from a wondrous prize until we are certain that it is truly impossible to attain."

Tharzon laughed in a low voice. "No one doubts the excessive reach of your ambitions, Jack. It is the length of your grasp that is in question." The dwarf paused to draw himself a mug of Old Smokey. "This riddle is inscribed on Cedrizarun's tomb. The vault in which his funerary wealth is interred will be located somewhere near that spot, concealed by the most cunning secret entrance the master masons of old Sarbreen could devise. This riddle must tell you how to find and open the secret door."

"Are you certain that Cedrizarun did not intend a good jest at the expense of future tomb robbers?" Anders said. "How do you know that this has anything to do with a vault? For all we know, this is simply his favorite beer recipe, encoded for future brewmasters."

"I have spent almost fifty years learning all that I can about Sarbreen's old wealth and the disposal thereof," Tharzon said. "Trust me; the Guilder's Vault exists, despite the fact that it has never been found. Cedrizarun could not be certain that his descendants would retain the secret of his vault's entrance over the years, so he created the riddle as a clue in the event the knowledge was forgotten."

"Yes, but why leave any hints at all? Why leave an entrance to the vault, if it was simply designed to hold the wealth that Cedrizarun chose to take to the grave?" Anders wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Forgive me for saying so, Tharzon, but everyone knows that dwarves despise grave robbers. Why leave potential thieves any kind of a chance at all?"

Tharzon's eyes glittered-he'd made quite a handsome living by looting the crypts of his forefathers, even though he viewed it as restoring the glories of lost Sarbreen to their place in the light-but he held his temper. "Because Cedrizarun would want his sons, and their sons, and their sons after them to one day be buried at his side. His body doesn't lie under the stone or slab this inscription was found on; it lies inside the vault itself, with other places prepared for those who would one day join him there. That is why they would leave a door, Anders Aricssen."

"Back to the riddle," Jack said. "What of these leaves of autumn? Does that make any sense?"

Tharzon shrugged. "No, not to me. I have been-"

"What about these?" Anders reached over and pulled the parchment toward him. "The dwarf-runes are all carved here, in the center of the stone, but there's a border around the inscription. Grape leaves, perhaps? Could the inscription refer to the border around the words?"

Tharzon frowned and pulled the parchment back, looking at it more carefully. "I think you are right. Look, in the leaves-see how strangely the vines and the veins are worked? There are runes hidden in the border!" He studied them furiously for several minutes, ignorant of the fact that the Sembians in the other corner demanded more ale. The dwarf didn't even object when Anders got up and threw out the two merchants, barring the door behind them. After a long time, the dwarf rubbed his eyes and looked up. "Damn it. They mean nothing. Pieces of letters and words, but nothing complete, all of it jumbled together."

"But it was deliberate?" Jack asked. "Not a coincidence of design?"

"The carver worked hard to put them in and conceal them," Tharzon admitted, "but they don't make sense! It's gibberish!"

Jack put his chin in his hand and thought hard, staring at the riddle. "What if," he said slowly, "these fractional runes align somehow when you encircle them around something? Say, a particular bottle of brandy?"

"Hard to imagine wrapping a stone marker around a bottle," Anders remarked.

"Yes, it is," Jack agreed. He picked up the rubbing parchment and looked at it. "But not so hard to imagine wrapping a piece of paper on which the design has copied around a bottle, is it?"

Tharzon stared at him. Then he seized an empty mug from behind the bar and set it on the counter. "Go on," he said. "Try it."

Jack took the parchment and wrapped it around the mug. He quickly discovered that the parchment simply covered itself up on multiple windings without revealing anything in the border marks. But if he angled the parchment, he created bands in which the border overlapped with the border of the layer underneath. And some of the marks might line up to make whole runes… if he knew just how big the bottle was supposed to be, and how sharply the border strip should incline on its circuit of the bottle.

"I think," he said, "that we need the bottle now."

Zandria's home was a strong lodge of stone and timber nestled in a quiet alley of Swordspoint. Once the building had been a woodcarver's shop, with a large workshop in the stone-walled lower floor and a set of small apartments for the craftsman's family in the wooden floors above. Finding Zandria had been harder than Jack had expected. Raven's Bluff was a city that teemed with adventurers, so asking after adventurers took some time. But persistence, silver, and a little luck brought him the address he sought.