I looked up and discovered that I could now see only the bulge that was the bluff. The building atop it was completely obscured. I had never made such a steep climb and I thought again uneasily of the abyss.

Ahmedri went up first and alone, secured rope and sent it down for Swallow who scaled it and then half hauled me up to him as Ahmedri scaled the next stretch. Then he dropped down another rope for Swallow. We left the ropes tied in place for the descent. I could not have managed without them, for in one stretch the face of the mountain was so perpendicular it was as if a knife had cleaved through it. I could not think how the tribesman had scaled it without rope, for there were no sizeable juts or rocks sticking out that he could have used for foot or handholds. It was not until we had almost reached the bluff that I saw with incredulity the way that Ahmedri made a fist to secure his hands in the narrow cracks that criss-crossed the cliff face. Several times my heart was in my mouth as he raised himself up in that way, one arm sometimes bearing the whole weight of his body hanging from a fist he had jammed in a crevice. I could not imagine where in the desert lands he had learned such a skill, but even if I had been inclined to ask, I would have had no breath for it.

By the time we reached the lip of the bluff every muscle in my arms and legs was burning and I could do no more than crawl over it and scrabble away from the edge like a beetle before lying flat and resting my cheek gratefully on the smooth stone. Maruman stepped lightly from my shoulders, sat down neatly and began to wash himself thoroughly. It was several long minutes before I could summon the will or energy to lift my head and look at the building we had come to see, but when I did, it was so radiantly white in another errant beam of sunlight that I could not gaze at it for long.

‘Look,’ Swallow said for the second time that day, and I turned to see that he and Ahmedri were standing on the eastern edge of the bluff looking east. I got up on legs that trembled and went to join them. ‘I’d call it a twoday march to the edge of the range,’ Swallow said, glancing at Ahmedri.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘More like three, I’d say. If that is the way we are to go.’ He looked at me as if he expected me to speak, but instead, some impulse made me look down. My head spun as I saw the drop we had so laboriously ascended, and far below the abyss between the two mountains opened darkly like a gaping mouth.