And so on the next morning he found himself in front of the old woodcarver's house, now converted into a small fortress and stronghold for Zandria and the band of monster slayers, dungeon delvers, tyrant topplers, and peasant protectors who followed her.

"Illyth would give her eyeteeth to listen to the tales you'd tell," Jack said to the building. "Noble deeds, daring exploits, glorious battles, and grisly death. What more could a girl ask for?"

He laughed aloud and bounced up to the door, guarded by a whitewashed shield and scarlet falcon emblem hung over the lintel. It stood open to the old woodcarver's workshop; Jack knocked once on the doorframe and stepped inside. "Hello?" he called. "Is Zandria here?"

Two men worked inside, stoking a fire at the center of an improvised armorer's shop. Several chain mail shirts rested on thick wooden mannequins along the wall, four suits of full plate armor stood mounted on the opposite wall, and dozens of helms, greaves, vambraces, pauldrons, epaulets, and all the other pieces that went into a fine suit of field armor lay scattered about. Both fellows turned as Jack walked in-tall, powerfully built fellows dressed in smiths' aprons and marked here and there by various scars, tattoos, nicks, and scrapes. Freebooter swordsmen, Jack decided, now tending to their battered gear.

"Who wants to know?"

"I am a messenger in the service of Ontrodes the sage."

The two swordsmen exchanged glances. One shrugged and wiped his hands on his apron. "Up the stairs. After you, of course."

Jack bowed and trotted up the stairs to the upper floor. He emerged in a large common room, dominated by a vast oak table with eight chairs. Trophies and banners decorated the walls-orc battle flags, old Sembian tapestries, Vaasan shields and swords. At one end of the table sat Zandria, surrounded by dozens of texts and manuscripts.

"Brunn, I told you I was not to be disturbed!" she snapped without looking up. Then she did look up, and her face grew livid as her eyes fell on Jack. "Incredible. Your nerve simply defies belief. Do you want me to burn you to a husk of smoldering ash? Do you have some unnatural desire to meet your death this very instant?"

"Against my better judgment, I have decided to give you the opportunity to contract my services as guide, advisor, and confidant," Jack said. He pulled up a chair at the opposite end of the table and poured himself a goblet of watered wine from a silver ewer service. "I will now entertain your solicitations for my assistance."

"Zandria, should I throw him out?" the swordsman-Brunn-asked. He moved into a menacing position directly behind Jack..

"No. Beat him within an inch of his life, and then throw him out."

Brunn's hand came down on Jack's shoulder, and the powerful fighter started to haul the rogue out of the chair. "Nothing personal," he grunted. Pinning Jack with his iron grip, he drew back his other hand to begin the pummeling.

"I've solved Cedrizarun's riddle," Jack said conversationally. He tried not to shrink from the impending blow. "And I know how to find the Guilder's Tomb."

Brunn furrowed his brow. He had a heavy jaw and a flat, square face that might have looked dull-witted except for the keen alertness in his hard blue eyes. "Zandria, you've been trying to make heads or tails of Cedrizarun's riddle for weeks now. He says he can help. What's the harm of hearing him out?"

"You don't know him like I do," she snapped.

"So? Who is he, anyway?"

Zandria just crossed her arms. Brunn shrugged and turned to Jack. "Fine. So who are you, anyway?"

"I am Jack Ravenwild. I am an adventurer like yourself, although I am currently between companies. I have some learning, some skill at difficult places, and some magic." He carefully extricated himself from Brunn's grasp and fished out the copy of the tomb inscription from his belt. He held it up so that the swordsman could see it. "I'll tell you how to read this if you consent to my presence on your upcoming expedition and agree to cut me in for a fair share of the Guilder's loot."

"That's it," the mage growled. She stepped around the table and stalked up to Jack, murder in her eyes. "There is no arrangement, no employment, no consulting fees. We want nothing to do with you, do you understand me? Now get out of here before I flay the skin from your worthless carcass!"

Jack flinched from her vitriol. He stood in silence for a good minute, weighing her words. Then he nodded slowly. "Very well. I shall not trouble you with my presence again, my lady." He rolled up the parchment and stuck it through his belt. "If you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with the mage Skellar the Unjust, of the Company of the Dead Troll. Perhaps he'll be interested-"

"Stop right there," Zandria whispered in a deadly voice. "You will not show that parchment to anyone else."

"Then allow me to show it to you," Jack replied. "Bring me your bottle of Maidenfire Gold."

"That brandy is worth a thousand gold crowns," Zandria replied. "I am not going to let your larcenous hands get within ten feet of it."

"Then you might as well cut my throat right now!" Jack roared. " 'At the center of all the thirty-seventh!' Do you want to know what that means or not?"

The mage eyed him coldly. Thinking, then she spun on her heel and stormed out of the room, returning a moment later with the ancient bottle, almost black with age. She set it on the table in front of him without another word.

Jack took the parchment and spread it flat beside the bottle. "See this exquisite border work? Leaves, vines, a curiously undwarven design? Why do you suppose it is there?"

Behind him, the swordsman shrugged. "Cedrizarun was a distiller and vintner," he said. "Not all dwarves work in stone and steel."

Jack took the sheet of paper on which he'd copied the rubbing and turned back to the bottle. " 'At the center of all the thirty-seventh, encircled by these leaves of autumn."' He looked carefully at the bottle; it was spun glass that had been shaped while warm, pressed and sculpted with a relief showing dimly a field or farmland. The same design was repeated four times around the bottle's circumference-the field under winter snow, spring plowing, summer with high waves of grain, and autumn reaping. The sun shone down over each scene. " 'Mark carefully the summer staircase."

Using the sun over the summer scene as his starting point, Jack wrapped the parchment clockwise around the bottle. The distance that the sun stood over the field he used as the rise of the winding.

The inscription fit exactly three times in circumference. And it inclined just enough that the bottom border overlapped itself, revealing a faint line of dwarf-runes concealed amid the leaf design. "Bring me some sealing wax," Jack said softly, holding the parchment in his hands. Zandria stirred and retrieved a block of red wax from her work desk, muttering a small cantrip to soften it. "Now adhere the sheet to itself at just this position. I will hold it steady." The mage did so, frowning in concentration as she worked around Jack's hands.

Gingerly, Jack released his grip and stepped back, leaving the bottle standing on the table in its parchment wrapping. He bent low to study the runes without touching or displacing them, Zandria's face just beside his.

"Another message," she breathed in wonder. "Ten paces south. Speak 'kharaz-urzu.' Raise the sevenstone."

Jack stood up straight and grinned in delight. "Shall we discuss terms?" he said.