Erymeldir has asked you to do battle with the various spiders in the Limlight Gorge and gather the venom-glands from them. He hopes to discover which -- if any -- of the spiders might be responsible for Greylimb's affliction.
'Spiders, you say? Hoom. We have not had any spiders in these woods for many years, many long years indeed. There is bad blood, you know, between the Ents and spiders. That goes far back...hoom, far back indeed.
'Let me see, I believe it was some years after the Men of the Sea and the Elves drove back the old darkness again, and not so long after the Gardens of the Entwives were laid waste, that an old, dark-hearted spider wove her lair not far from here, in the darkest part of old Fangorn. There she waited, preying upon any so unfortunate as to wander in among her maze of webs.
'Of course, in those days, there were few who came here, for the forest had been roused to great anger after the desolation of the Gardens, and many of those who had once lived near the forest had died in the war or been driven away, so there was little prey for one such as she. I believe she grew ever more ravenous, and in time, we discovered that she had even tried to slake her endless hunger with the living sap of the trees, and so, ta-rum, we turned our anger upon her and her brood.
'We drove her out then, brushing aside her webs as a child brushes aside cobwebs, and hounded her until she fled beneath the roots of the Misty Mountains. Hoom-hom! We never heard her name again...what was it? Let me think. Hoom! Gurthúl? Yes, I think that was it.
'Do spiders live so long? I would not think so, but then, I am not a spider, so I cannot say. She would not return here though. She is not strong enough to fight us, and her webs are no hindrance to an Ent, for we can crush stone if we are so inclined. But still, Greylimb is ill from a spider's venom, and the trees around us sicken....'1/1
4 Speak toThickbark (Show dialog)
'Our deepest roots sicken, and the water of the Limlight runs foul with venom. The Elves tell us it must come from near to this place, but there are no spiders here, hoom.
'Ta-rum! I have just remembered, then! Greylimb told me about it one long summer's day...of a cave he discovered nearby when he was but a slender Enting. Beneath the waters of the river, he said it was, where many of the ancient roots of the forest gathered to drink. Hoom! but he could not show it to me, because we are full-grown Ents now, and too big for the narrow ways within.
'It opens nearly onto our grove here -- over there, next to the Limlight Falls -- but we have seen no sign of spiders creeping about the entrance. Hoom-hom! If they are within, I cannot say how they came to be there.'1/1
Silver Token of the Anduin
Golden Token of the Anduin