Elf Lock.

Chapter Fifteen

The Golden Dragon

"That was quite impressive," A dark skinned woman dressed in gold came to stand at the table where the group was sitting. They had found a tavern down one of the back streets, it wasn't as run down as the tired mule and this one had a small band playing, the music was cheerful with a faun playing a fiddle.

The woman looked rich with a crown of golden stars upon her black curly hair, maybe she was royalty Lloyd thought. She certainly had that aura about her, though she didn't seem as arrogant as the royals he was used too back in the kingdom.

"And you are?" Constantine said in a pompous tone but whimpered slightly as Hodge glared at him. He had been like that since Hodge had killed the Red Cap. The woman's golden eyes looked at the human prince raising an eyebrow.

"Fauna sent a message to me saying you may come through here, she has gotten quite good at scaring has she not," The woman said sitting down with a slight smile, "Though she never said you was a dark elf, or at least partly one,"

"Well it's not part of me I show often, only when my husband is threatened," Hodge smiled.

"That's understandable, red caps are notorious for spiriting faeries off, they are quite a problem in these parts and are becoming hard to control," She sighed showing she had no love for the corrupted faeries either.

"Wait are you the golden dragon?" Ragamuffin gasped.

"That I am and you may call me Empress Carella," She smiled warmly at Ragamuffin.

"How can you be a dragon? You're a woman," Constantine scoffed making Lloyd shake his head. He had heard that dragons were actually shape shifters; he didn't know they were so beautiful though.

"Even Morag knew dragons have two forms, Morag is smarter than silly skinny human," Morag said laughing as she drank her ale.

"I heard of this, but no one said a dragons other form was so beautiful," Lloyd whispered

"Our form which humans normally see is the one we use to protect our lands,"

Constantine scoffed, even though he knew that the knights that want to slay dragons often had no need too, and the villages were often built on land already known to be a dragon's home. Dragons never actually turned up out of nowhere and attacked; they were either protecting their young or protecting themselves.

"Well it's not our fault dragons won't move off the land we need,"

"And it's not my people fault that we have most of your knights as breakfast," Carella smiled slightly, but it was Ragamuffin who's fist hit the table in a sudden bought of anger which was out of character for him.

"The dragons that human knights kill are just children, you people are disgusting,"

"Children?" Lloyd gasped suddenly looking horrified at the idea, Constantine looked indifferent.

"It is true no human has ever killed a fully grown dragon," The empress looked sad for a moment, but right now she had a mission to help them find the grimoire, "This is why I want to help you by giving you a copy of my part of the map. We don't want what's left of the Celestine Kingdom taking more of our land and our young being maimed and killed; we want to help get your land back,"

"Wait parts? There's more than one part," Lloyd spoke suddenly feeling silly that the bit he had memorised was only part of it.

"There's five parts and each part leads to the next one until you come to the fifth which will tell you where the grand grimoire is being kept,"

Hodge nodded at this, Carella's reason made sense but he felt she wasn't telling them something, but then himself and Ragamuffin was just using the humans. He wondered now with Lloyd's map being of little use if they could just leave them behind, but he had started to like Lloyd and Lloyd wouldn't leave Constantine behind.

"If you want me to give you the map meet me at the foot of the mountains at dawn,"