Elemental Summoner 1 by D. Levesque (best beach reads of all time TXT) 📕

my anger in check. We get a good meal, and slaves get day-old bread? Wonder how much they would have charged Leeha if she was alone?

“That will be one silver,” he says. “Did you want to eat down here or in your room?” he asks, motioning someone over to him. I glance over and see it’s a young girl, human, about fifteen years old.

“I will eat in my room, and so will my guard. We have an early day tomorrow,” I say, turning back to him.

“And your slave, will she be sleeping in our stables, or?” he asks me.

“Hmm,” I tell him, pretending to think it over. Leeha said that most slaves would either be sleeping in the barns of the inns, which usually are out in back, or at the foot of the bed of a master. I told her; no fucking way am I letting her sleep in a barn. “I think I will keep her close in case I need something fetched in the middle of the night. So the floor will do. Might be good for her since she has been sleeping on soft ground all week, and sleeping on a hard surface will remind her of her place.”

He grins at me and nods, “Aye. We can’t have them getting airs, can we? I will have Pricilla bring everything up to you. So that will be eleven silvers, and one copper.”

I open my bag and bring out the correct number of coins, placing them on the counter in front of him. He grabs them quickly and stuffs them away somewhere before I can get a chance to see where they went.

“Bring these two men to the green and red rooms,” the innkeeper tells the young girl. She nods, turns, and smiles at me.

“This way, my Lord,” she says brightly and heads to the back of the room, where there are stairs leading up to a landing on the second floor. I see doors up there, and I guess they are the inn’s rooms. Once we get to the top landing, she turns to me and says, “I will bring up your food after I show you to your rooms. Don’t fret. The rooms are clean, and we change the bedding once a week.”

Once a week? I cringe, thinking of who else could have slept on them. But truthfully, having a soft bed will be nice right now, and I don’t care. Pricilla stops in front of a door and says, “That’s the red room,” and I see that it has a red square painted on it. She moves to the next door down the walkway and says, “This is the green room,” somewhat redundantly now since I see it has a green square. It makes sense to use colors instead of numbers or letters if someone can’t read.

“Thank you,” I tell her. She nods and hurriedly walks back the way we came.

“Let me check the room out first,” Bryan says, as he opens the door to the green room. He goes in and checks the room out, and even gets on his hands and knees and looks under the bed. He gets back up and waves me inside.

I walk into the room, and it’s not much to look at. There is a bed and a piece of furniture which I assume is the dresser, but the only thing on it is a large bowl and a large candle holder with three candles burning away and giving off light. On the wall behind the bed is an oil lantern burning away, giving off more light into the room, making it brighter. In the corner is a small wooden seat with a lid. Jesus fucking hell! Is that a chamber pot? One thing I learned in the last couple of days of traveling is how to do my business in the woods. But this? And I have Leeha in the room with me? I mean, I guess I’m spoiled from having flushing toilets on Earth. Though, I know there are still places on Earth that don’t have those.

I hear the door close, so I turn around, and Leeha had come in. She sees the look on my face and must realize what I had been looking at, since she laughs quietly and says, “Don’t worry. I will leave the room before you decide to use it.”

“We need to be careful what we say,” Bryan says. “The walls might have ears.”

“Really?” I ask him in surprise. “Why?”

“To find out our business? Where we are going? There are gangs in the cities who pay good money to know where someone is traveling to and then pass that information on.”

“And then meet you on the way to either rob you or kill you,” Leeha says just as quietly, in a voice that is barely above a whisper.

“Is there anything we can do to make it so others can’t hear us?” I ask quietly.

Leeha shakes her head. “No, I don’t know how you would do that?”

“Well, since the walls are wood, what if I cause them to vibrate enough that people won’t be able to hear us through them?” I say, looking at them. They both look at me blankly.

“You lost us, I think, Alex,” Leeha says slowly. “What is vibrate?”

Crap, they don’t understand the concept of vibration? “Hmm. Put your hand on your throat and hum,” I tell them.

They both look at me strangely, but follow my directions. “That sensation you are feeling is the vibration of your voice. Now, if I can use Earth magic to make the wood vibrate like that, hard enough that it can interrupt sound going through the walls, folks on the other side won’t hear us. Right now, when we talk our voices are carried to the walls, and folks can listen in on us. But, if I can cause the walls to vibrate, the sound won’t get through to someone on the other side. Hell, I am sure I could do it with Water