Harpy Thyme by Piers Anthony Page A

where the Fountain of Youth is, and they'll never tell.”
    “Humfrey gave me some elixir.”
    “I don't believe it. He's too grumpy. Transform somebody.”
    Trent gestured. The demoness became a blue toad with green warts.
    The toad puffed into smoke. “I didn't mean me!” the smoke protested. In a moment the nude human figure was back, without panties. “But I suppose I can take your identity on faith. Who are these winged monsters?”
    “I am Gloha Harpy-Goblin.”
    “And I am Cynthia Centaur.”
    The demoness squinted at them. “I don't think I've seen many of your kind before. Just Che Centaur's family.”
    “Is it a nice family?” Cynthia asked.
    “You don't know? That's interesting.” The demoness faded out.
    “She's somewhat of a nuisance,” Trent remarked. “But there's nothing to be done about her. She seldom does actual harm, at least.”
    “I thought she had been locked into the Companions Game,” Gloha said, remembering something she had once heard.
    A puff of smoke reappeared. “I served my time and got out on parole.” It disappeared.
    Gloha made a mental note: one could never be quite certain that a demon wasn't still around.
    They walked on out of the demon realm. There were no more odd events. Evidently the demons had gotten bored with them. That was a relief.
    The fungus along the marked route turned brownish. The air became chill. Gloha closed her wings closely around her body, insulating it with the feathers. Cynthia suffered less, because she had more furry mass, but she did take a jacket out of her backpack and put it on over her shirt to protect her maidenly human torso. Evidently she had never adopted the centaur mode of undress after gaining some experience with the form, and had retained some of her clothing in case of need. Trent, already competently garbed; seemed to have no problem.
    The air proceeded from chill to frigid. Patches of frost appeared. The three stepped up the pace so as to warm themselves by the vigor of their exertion. Gloha would have been concerned if she didn't see that the trail-marking fungus continued, though now dark and dormant.
    They turned a corner, entered a moderately large chamber-and came fact-to-snoot with a dragon. The creature had antennae instead of eyes, which made sense down here, but in other respects seemed formidable enough. It had dragonly form and mass, metallic overlapping dark gray-green scales, stoutly taloned feet, one and a half squintillion teeth, and an attitude. It moved forward, inhaling, growling inwardly.
    “Wait!” Trent cried, advancing to meet it. “We have a pass for this path.”
    Too late. The dragon exhaled. A surge of snowy vapor blew him back. Ice crystallized on his body. He fell back into the girls, completely iced.
    “It's a snow dragon!” Gloha exclaimed, appalled as the two of them automatically caught him before he hit the floor and shattered. “I thought all of them were white and in the winter mountains.”
    “Don't worry about that,” Cynthia said. “Just get him back to safety and get him thawed.”
    She was right. They dragged the ice man back the way they had come, away from the dragon. Cynthia did most of the work, being much larger than Gloha. When they were around the corner and in a section of the tunnel too small for the bulk of the dragon, they laid him carefully on the floor. “Is he-?” Gloha asked, appalled.
    “Not if we act promptly,” Cynthia said. “The ice is on the outside. If we chip it off immediately, he shouldn't freeze inside.”
    They chipped at his body, and chunks of ice fell to the floor with tinkling sounds. “But his face-we must clear that so he can breathe,” Gloha said. “But we can't just pound off the ice; we'd chip off his nose and lips too.”
    “You're right. We need to apply fast, gentle warmth. I think this means I have a pretext to do what I would have liked to do a year-I mean, seventy-one or -two years ago.”
    Gloha was bemused. "You