The Principal rules the City and so can do what he likes. He likes raping women and murdering their male kin should they complain. The City Council must find a way to curb the Principal and so save their City from impending chaos. The solution is to provide him a friend, with the companionship he so desperately needs. They find a Wild Man, abandoned in the Desert as a child, as an appropriate friend. Because the Wild Man has lived with animals since he can remember, and the Principal has behaved like an animal for so long, they both need to be prepared in advance.
It's a curious relationship, with so little and so much in common. The Principal and the Friend come to spend most of the time wandering in the Desert like outcasts. It is the Wild Man's idea to climb the Stairway to Heaven, hidden away high in the Mountains to the East and guarded by a fearsome monster.
It's an unlikely task for the two of them, and it is likely to be their undoing