The Stairs of Five Thousand Steps was not a construction of joined stonework. It had been bored directly through the solid pink granite core of the eastern pylon by the heat boring machines of the First Dynasty. The steps, each exactly ten inches high, thirty inches deep, and fifteen arm-lengths wide, coiled upward in a nonstop, unbroken helix that wrapped around a central hollow air-flow shaft six hundred arm-lengths in width. Along the inner rim, a nonstop stone railing of carved pink granite, three feet high and two feet thick, prevented travelers from falling into the yawning gulf of the core. There, the air rushed upward in a ceaseless, freezing gale that smelled of ozone and ancient stone.
Qiao Ming walked the inner margin of the spiral. There, the steps met the circular stone railing. His bare feet were grey with the fine, flour-like rock dust ground from the treads by millions of passing sandals. But the skin of his soles was so thick and leathery that he felt neither the sharp edges of the granite nor the freezing draft that rose continuously through the central core. His toes gripped the worn stone with gut balance, compensating for the eighteen-degree bank of the helix as it climbed toward the high roof.
