‘Maris! Maris, I …’He stopped, scarcely able to believe his eyes. He was standing in what had been Linius Pallitax's magnificent personal apartment in the School of Mist. But now the place was an empty, echoing hall, with open doors leading to other deserted rooms. In the middle of it all sat a great, glassy-bodied spindlebug trilling mournfully to himself.‘Tweezel?’ Quint began uncertainly. ‘What in Earth and Sky …?’‘Gone,’ trilled the spindlebug, shaking his huge angular head slowly from side to side. ‘All the master's things. His scrolls, his instruments, even his bed … and Mistress Maris with them. Gone, all gone.’‘Gone where?’ Quint demanded.‘To Undertown,’ Tweezel replied, turning and fixing his sad eyes on the youth. ‘They had an order, signed in the master's own hand,’ he added sorrowfully. ‘Mistress Maris didn't want to leave, but when she saw her father's signature, she couldn't argue. So she left with them …’‘Left with who?’ Quint demanded angrily.
