He could hold the Ape and the Anchor in his mind, sense the levels of meaning that lay beneath, but he could not plunge down into them, through the layers of meaning. They lay tantalisingly out of his reach. It was like turning a key in a lock, but being unable to push the door open.

And he realised that it didn't matter that the skull was more powerful, because that power was only half of what made the dice work. It was the symbols that controlled the raw power of the bone, directing it like an aqueduct diverts water from a river. Perhaps, in etching the images into the bone, the artisan had put a spell on them. Or had King Sol created the dice himself? Ward didn't know. All he knew was that the skull didn't work.

There was nothing for it now but to keep moving. He tucked the skull under his elbow and went on.

Something blocked the tunnel up ahead. It hung from the ceiling, terminating almost at the tunnel floor. When he reached it he discovered it was a great round pipe, its circular end studded with rusty iron nuts, each as big as his fist. It took him a moment to realise what it was. After all, he was used to seeing them in the floor, not hanging from the ceiling. A plug. This one was rustier than any he had seen before; The Vault was evidently damper than the sewer tunnels Ward now realised must run along just above his head. He was so close to home.

Sometimes you hear noises through them, Nick had told him. I once thought I heard voices. But sound does strange things down here.

He wondered if the sounds transmitted up through the plugs had belonged to people – Brothers perhaps, charged with dragging banned items up the tunnel.

He ducked beneath the plug and went on, thinking that Nick's theory that they regulated groundwater rising up into the sewers had been wrong after all.

But Nick had been right.

The Snokeys found the water first. He heard their squealing rise a notch, and the sound of their splashing, before he saw the water reflected in the Corpusant's light. Ward stopped and peered ahead at the knot of writhing fur and flesh. The snokeys were trapped between water and fire.

"Stay here," Ward said to the Corpusant.

The Corpusant didn't answer, but when Ward stepped towards the snokeys it didn't follow him. He came as close to the seething wall of rodents as he dared. They were like a single living creature, some antediluvian horror with hundreds of eyes and tentacles. Their shrieking was constant, sussurating in waves. He could smell the urine and faeces they ejected over each other. He could smell their fear. His stomach turned greasily over, like an egg.

He went back to the Corpusant.

"We can't go any further."

(Allow me to consume them. They are lesser things.)

"No."

(I sense water)

"The tunnel's flooded up ahead."

(I cannot pass through this substance)

Interesting. "You'd better stay here while I scout up ahead," Ward said.

There was still the matter of the snokeys though. The thought of pushing through that writhing mass made the gorge rise in his throat. They would probably eat him alive.

Something occurred to him. The lead-lined room had contained The Corpusant. But now that it was free, could it go anywhere?

"Can you go away?" he asked.

(Where woulds't thou have me go?)

Ward thought of the sewers directly above. No, too dangerous. What if it ran into some Scowerers?

He pointed down instead. "Into the earth?"

(I cannot pass through earth.)

That made sense. Nor could fire.

"Can you, um – go out then? Extinguish yourself?"

(No more than thou can will thyself to die.)

"Okay. Well how about this. You go back to the bottom of the stairs and wait there. I'll come back for you," he added quickly. But as soon as it was out of his mouth he wondered if he really meant it. "Give me thirty minutes, okay? Count to -" he thought about it, "- eighteen hundred. Slowly."

(As thou wish)

Ward couldn't believe it had worked. He felt strangely guilty for having deceived it so easily. It had been like tricking a small child.

The Corpusant's light receded back down the tunnel. 

Is this chapter grossing you out?

Good, then my work here is done.