Read Online Immortal at the Edge of the World by Gene Doucette - Free Book Online Page B

are,” I said, pulling them quickly from the flames before they legitimately caught fire, which they were moments away from doing. I handed one rabbit to him. “But you’re going to have to make me a better offer than that.”
    “Better than making sure your head isn’t removed by religious fanatics? And keeping you from burning dinner?”
    “I’m a quick study,” I said. “These are strange times, but I’ve seen plenty stranger. I’d like to know what it is you’ve lost, and why I am the one who can help you find it.”
    “I feel as if telling you now would be premature.”
    “How am I to help you find something when I don’t know what it is I’m finding?”
    “It is in the possession of a Jew merchant who does not know what he truly has. I need to find him and get it back before he figures this out.”
    “Again, I ask why I am the one who is meant to help you do this?”
    “I need a man who can work miracles.”
    I laughed. “I may be old, but you are mistaken if you think I have miracles in me.”
    “Ah! That’s where you are wrong, Li-Yuan. For I know you performed at least one.”
    “You have me at a loss, Hsu,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
    “Tell me, when did you last hear the name Li-Yuan?”
    “In truth, I don’t know. I’m not very good with the passage of time. I would say nearly a century, perhaps a little longer.”
    “Yes, that’s about right. And you were called Li-Yuan by an elder on the day you saved his village from an angry god.”
    This was only a little bit correct. The angry god was a dragon, and while that may still sound pretty impressive, that’s only because humankind never really got dragons right. They weren’t all that much of a big deal back when they actually existed, although it helped to know this in advance of encountering one.
    The village Hsu was talking about had a problem with its livestock getting picked off by a particularly annoying water dragon, and I happened to be around, so I took a big stick and hit the dragon on the nose with it until he went away. Then I told the elder not to let the animals go near the water at night anymore, and that was that.
    It wasn’t really a thing, to be entirely honest, and I wouldn’t have even remembered it had it not come with a godhood. Granted, you have to know that water dragons—these are more serpentine than the land-based ones, and smaller—don’t like to be hit on the nose, but most creatures already don’t like to be hit on the nose, so it’s not like it’s a big secret.
    “Honestly, Hsu, I couldn’t find that little village again if I wanted to. I haven’t set foot in China since, and I was only there in the first place because that elder owed me money. Are you telling me this story is still known a century later?”
    “It may be. I don’t know. I did not receive this information secondhand, though. I was a young boy in that village.”
    The oldest goblin I ever met was eighty-two, and he didn’t look nearly as healthy as Hsu. Some species have longer-than-normal lifespans, like imps and succubi. Some have shorter-than-normal, like pixies. One or two—vampires, for instance, and some species of moss—could in theory live forever. But goblins and elves have very human life spans.
    “I don’t believe you,” I said.
    “Said the immortal man to the goblin.”
    “You make a fair point. But you are a goblin in your twenties.”
    “I am indeed.”
    “Possibly math is something you have not excelled at?”
    “You asked why you are the man I need to help me with this quest. The answer is, you knew how to defeat a dragon, and that is the kind of knowledge I can’t find elsewhere.”
    “You’re expecting dragons?”
    “No, but the man I seek is surpassing clever, and there are rumors he employs monsters. I need a clever merchant and a monster expert.”
    “What sort of monsters?”
    “I do not know. The stories may be exaggerations to make this man sound more impressive, and the