His favourite story if you offer him bash--the drug of which he is
fondest, and for which he will give his service in war to the elves
against the goblins, or vice-versa if the goblins bring him more--his
favourite story, when bodily soothed by the drug and mentally fiercely
excited, tells of a quest undertaken ever so long ago for nothing more
marketable than an old woman's song.

Picture him telling it. An old man, lean and bearded, and almost
monstrously long, that lolled in a city's gateway on a crag perhaps
ten miles high; the houses for the most part facing eastward, lit by
the sun and moon and the constellations we know, but one house on the
pinnacle looking over the edge of the world and lit by the glimmer of
those unearthly spaces where one long evening wears away the stars: my
little offering of bash; a long forefinger that nipped it at once on a
stained and greedy thumb--all these are in the foreground of the
picture. In the background, the mystery of those silent houses and of
not knowing who their denizens were, or what service they had at the
hands of the long porter and what payment he had in return, and
whether he was mortal.

Picture him in the gateway of this incredible town, having swallowed
my bash in silence, stretch his great length, lean back, and begin to
speak.

It seems that one clear morning a hundred years ago, a visitor to Tong
Tong Tarrup was climbing up from the world. He had already passed
above the snow and had set his foot on a step of the earthward
stairway that goes down from Tong Tong Tarrup on to the rocks, when
the long porter saw him. And so painfully did he climb those easy