The Fountain of Youth

This was the reason why Ponce da Quirm was exploring in the realm of the Tezuman Empire.

Shortly after parting from Rincewind and Eric and having received their gift of a Parrot, he found it.

While it is true to say that he definitely started feeling younger for a while, no question there, in his excitement he unfortunately neglected the crucial need to boil the water first.

His next destination, following the presumed short and sympathetic chat with Death (who must have filled him in on the thing about the water, as there is one question everybody wants to ask Death on meeting Him unexpectedly), was Hell.

Two things may be assumed at this point:

• That the parrot drank some of the water too, being an elderly bird possessed of some sentience (but limited vocabulary), as it joined da Quirm in Hell.
• The underlying reason for their arrival in Hell was that, in seeking to reverse age and be young again, they'd fallen foul of the vanity clause and died with one breach of the Seven Deadly Sins on their avian/human consciences.

The secret of the location of the Fountain of Youth died with them.

Annotation

There are hundreds of myths about a Fountain of Youth, and it even turns up in Gulliver's Travels but these seem to refer to Ponce de Leon's trips around the Caribbean, which was also mentioned in Pirates of the Caribbean:Stranger Tides.