The crescent moon had fallen behind the cliff when they began to creep across the plain after their Leper guide. Pinpricks of light could be seen along the outermost, upper edge of the city rock. Carnelian imagined Masters there, sleeping perhaps or indulging in some lordly pleasure. That world up there, nearer to the stars than to the earth, seemed at the same time alien and alluring.
Countless gullies gouging the plain made the going hard. Rounding the cliff they saw the city rock looming before them as an immensity of blackness. The Leper led them down a path into a gully. They crossed a stream by means of a plank bridge. As they drew ever nearer to the city rock, Carnelian became aware of a sickening odour. With each step it wafted stronger so that he became convinced they must be approaching some immense, rotting corpse. He tried to wind his uba more tightly over his face, but still the stench thickened until he could feel it rasping at his throat. Seeing the Leper begin climbing a steep slope, Carnelian came to a halt. The night was filled with the sound of retching. A hill rose before them from which the stench was emanating.
‘What is this?’ he called up to the Leper.
‘The Heap,’ said his voice, already somewhere above them.
‘We have to climb it?’ Carnelian did not want to believe it.
‘The Ladder’s up there.’
He could not see the Leper clearly. Pushing his head back he thought there might be a crack running up the rock all the way to the sky. It seemed to him he had seen this before. Then he realized how much it resembled the fissure in the Pillar of Heaven that the Rainbow Stair climbed. He saw how the crack disgorged onto the Heap. It seemed that the Lepers’ Ladder was actually the sewer of Qunoth.
Grimacing, he approached the mound. He put a foot on it and felt it give. Up he went, feeling the mush through his shoes, slipping on slime, hearing the squelch and crunch. Each footfall punctured the outer crust of the mound, releasing fluids and fetid exhalations. He fell several times, knees first into the soft excretions. When he put his hands out to stop his fall, they sank in up to his wrists. Yanking them out, he smeared the filth down his robe. Nausea curdled his belly. Eventually he could control it no longer. Tearing the uba from his face he added his vomit to the hill.
At last they reached the fissure, from which the sewage spilled like guts from a slit belly. Their Leper guide stood in what appeared to be an opening. As he saw Carnelian approaching, he ducked in. Carnelian peered into the tunnel, glanced round to see the Marula crawling up the hill like cockroaches, then crept into the darkness.
The Leper led him deep into the fissure. In the blackness he had to feel his way with feet and hands. The wall on his right was rock, upon which he scraped his hands as clean as he could manage. On his left was a barrier webbed with struts like the wings of a sky saurian. Their smooth curves suggested they might be bone. A leather membrane stretched over this framework was greasy with the noisome liquids it was holding back. Warm to the touch, it seemed the hide of some living monster. One mercy was that, in the tunnel, the stench was less violent.
Fumbling his way Carnelian ran into something that clutched at him. He fought down his horror, knowing it was the Leper guide.
‘Do we have to do this in the dark?’
‘Flame here turns the air to fire, Master.’
When the tunnel reached the crease of the fissure, it turned up to climb the rock. Carnelian clambered after the Leper, clutching at handholds, hooking his toes into steps made for smaller feet than his. They reached a ledge beyond which was another slippery climb. The Leper scuffing above him was a beacon in the blackness. Sometimes the sound would stop as the Leper waited for him. The first time, Carnelian froze. From below came a rustling as if a swarm of immense insects were following him. Something touched his foot and he jerked it free and moved on. It grew hotter and the air so stinking that, with each breath, he felt he was accumulating a disgusting paste in his lungs. Up and up he climbed until, faint from nausea, dizzy, he started to imagine himself nothing more than a maggot crawling through the cavities of a corpse.
At last he began to be able to make out above him the shape of the climbing Leper. Then Carnelian was pushing his fingers up into light. His arm followed, streaked with filth. A final few rungs, then a ledge. Squinting, he emerged into the open on the Leper’s heels.
He and the Leper were standing on a cascade of rubbish dammed by a wall pierced with arches. The lower ones were buried up to their keystones, but the ones above were free and open. Piled one upon the other they carried a parapet of stone upon their backs.
The Leper saw where he was looking. ‘The leftway, Master.’ He made a gesture to show how it ran over their heads. ‘This way.’
He began to scale the slope. Carnelian followed him, climbing through the muck. Rinds of fruit, mouldering gourds, pumpkins, carcasses, down and feathers. Everything was smeared with excrement, clotted with pastes, dripping cloudy fluids. The whole mass shuddered under each footfall. He tried to hoist his robe up, but it was already soaked through. Flies gummed his eyes. The impact of their bodies was like hail. A mat of them swarming everything. The stench was choking him. He stumbled as his foot broke through a saurian ribcage that snapped like twigs. He retched as his hand slid down into soft manure. He rose sobbing with disgust, flinging the stuff off him in dollops. Then he was up again, slipping and sliding. The morning swelled brighter as he came up over the brow of the slope.
‘The Midden,’ the Leper announced.
Carnelian saw they were on the edge of a hillocked expanse of rubbish hemmed in on either side by mudbrick walls, and running off towards a road already crowded with people.
Osidian strode past him. ‘Come on,’ he bellowed. He broke into a run and Carnelian chased after him.
Osidian sped ahead along a gully. Carnelian was relieved to have a firm, dry footing. Hovels gouged into the rubbish lined their route. Screeching with alarm, Lepers sprang from their path. Other trails joined theirs as it widened. The hovels rose higher, pierced with windows. Mudbrick walls reared higher still on either side. The hubbub of the road ahead was swelling louder. Soon he could see its bristling multitude. Along its edge men were emptying baskets of rubbish into the Midden. Here and there a cart sagged under a mound of filth. Men wearing sacks over their heads were shovelling it down to where Lepers were waiting to receive it. Faces were turning to gape as Osidian ran towards them. People began pulling at each other and pointing. Close behind Osidian, Carnelian leapt onto the road. Smooth cobbles under his feet. The crowd recoiled from their filthiness as Carnelian and Osidian ran at them. Their height allowed them to see over the sea of heads to where the road ended at a watch-tower that seemed no bigger than their thumbs.
Screams and chaos greeted the Marula as they flooded up from the Midden. Carnelian surfed the wave of hysteria along the road, his gaze fixed on the watch-tower, looking for the flashes that would betray them to the Wise. He saw none, even as the tower lifted its crown of wooden ribs up to the sky. It stood guard upon a gateway murky in the shadows. Nearing this, he was dismayed to see it closed. Ramparts on either side were unscalable stone. He saw the lookout suspended above them in his deadman’s chair and slowed. Osidian came to a halt, then turned; though his face was hidden, Carnelian could sense his incredulity. To have come so far and to be thwarted by a gate!
A grinding sound made Osidian spin round. Incredibly, the gate was opening; sliding up diagonally into the wall. Through the gap erupted riders. The gleam of brass at their throats showed them to be some kind of auxiliaries. Osidian and Carnelian leapt from their path. Swerving past them, the aquar crashed into the Marula, who were so densely packed they could not get out of the way. Some were hurled aside, one screamed as he was trampled, but those further back were spreading out. As they circled, something about their smell or their appearance spooked the aquar. Their riders were in confusion.