The Two Towers recap

With the Fellowship broken, the story follows two paths. Boromir dies defending the hobbits Merry and Pippin, who are captured by orcs; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli pursue them into Rohan. The hobbits escape into Fangorn Forest and rouse the tree-giant Ents against the wizard Saruman. The hunters meet Gandalf, returned from death as Gandalf the White, and together they free King Theoden of Rohan from Saruman's influence and win the battle of Helm's Deep, while the Ents destroy Saruman's fortress of Isengard and trap him in his tower. Pippin looks into a captured seeing-stone and is glimpsed by Sauron, and Gandalf carries him off toward Gondor. Meanwhile Frodo and Sam, guided by the treacherous creature Gollum, cross the Dead Marshes toward Mordor. Barred at the Black Gate, they take a secret southern path, are briefly held and then released by Boromir's honorable brother Faramir, and climb toward a hidden pass. There Gollum betrays them to the giant spider Shelob, who poisons Frodo. Sam, thinking his master dead, takes the ring, then learns Frodo is alive but captured by orcs, and the book ends with Frodo imprisoned and Sam outside alone.

The One Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron came into the keeping of the hobbit Frodo Baggins, and a Fellowship of nine set out to carry it into Sauron's land of Mordor and destroy it in the fire where it was forged. Their road was hard. In the mines of Moria the wizard Gandalf fell into a chasm fighting a demon of fire, the Balrog, and was lost. The survivors were sheltered by the elf-lady Galadriel and travelled on by river. At the last the man Boromir, a lord of Gondor, was overcome by longing for the ring and tried to take it from Frodo. Fearing what the ring could do even to good men, Frodo resolved to go on to Mordor alone, and only his servant Sam managed to follow him; the two crossed the river together. The rest of the company was scattered along the shore, Gandalf believed dead, and the quest split in two: two hobbits creeping toward the Enemy's country, and the broken Fellowship left behind as war gathers over Middle-earth.

At the river's edge the Fellowship's break turns to disaster. A band of orcs attacks; Boromir, repenting his attempt on the ring, dies fighting to defend the hobbits Merry and Pippin, but the two are seized and carried off, while Frodo and Sam are already gone toward Mordor. Aragorn finds the dying Boromir, and with Legolas and Gimli lays him in a boat sent over the falls, then the three set out on foot to rescue the captured hobbits, running for days across the grasslands of Rohan on the orcs' trail. They meet Eomer, a young marshal of Rohan, who has just destroyed a company of orcs near the eaves of a forest and lends them horses, though his king has forbidden dealings with strangers. Meanwhile Merry and Pippin, dragged along as prisoners, seize a moment of confusion during the Rohirrim's night attack to cut their bonds and slip away into the dark trees of Fangorn Forest.

In the ancient forest of Fangorn, Merry and Pippin meet Treebeard, the eldest of the Ents, great tree-herds who look after the woods. Alarmed by news of Saruman's axes and burnings on his borders, Treebeard summons the other Ents to a slow council to decide whether to go to war. On the plains outside, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli follow the hobbits' trail into the forest and are astonished to meet an old man robed in white: Gandalf, returned from death. He tells them that he fought the Balrog to its end, passed through death, and has been sent back with greater power for the task still ahead, now Gandalf the White. He turns their thoughts from the lost hobbits, whom he says are safe among the Ents, toward the immediate danger of Saruman and the threatened kingdom of Rohan. Reunited with his old horse Shadowfax, Gandalf leads Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli out of the forest to ride for the halls of the Rohan king, whom Saruman's malice has left weak and ill-counselled.

Gandalf leads the three companions to Edoras, hall of King Theoden of Rohan, whom he finds aged and despairing under the poisonous counsel of the servant Wormtongue, an agent of Saruman. Gandalf breaks the spell over him; Theoden casts out Wormtongue, takes up his sword, and rouses his people to war. As Saruman's great army marches on Rohan, Theoden and his men make their stand at the mountain fortress of Helm's Deep. Through a night of desperate assault the wall is breached, but they hold, and at dawn Gandalf returns with fresh riders and the enemy is broken. Meanwhile the Ents, having decided at last to act, storm Saruman's stronghold of Isengard, smash its works, and flood the valley, trapping the wizard in his tower of Orthanc. Riding to Isengard, Gandalf's company is met at the ruined gates by Merry and Pippin, safe and reunited with their friends.

At the wreck of Isengard the hobbits tell their tale, and the company parleys with the imprisoned Saruman. His voice is seductive and nearly wins some of the listeners over, but Gandalf resists him, and when Saruman refuses to repent, Gandalf breaks his staff and casts him out of the order of wizards. Wormtongue, in spite or clumsiness, hurls down a heavy dark globe from the tower, and Pippin retrieves it. That night, unable to master his curiosity, Pippin looks into the globe, a palantir or seeing-stone, and is caught in a vision by Sauron himself, who believes the hobbit is the ring-bearer held captive by Saruman. Shaken but unharmed, Pippin is questioned by Gandalf, who grasps the stone's danger. As a winged enemy scout passes overhead, Gandalf takes Pippin up and rides hard for Minas Tirith in Gondor, to warn the city and to keep the reckless hobbit close.

The book turns to Frodo and Sam, lost in the barren, broken hills on the edge of Mordor. Gollum, the ring's former owner, has been trailing them, and they capture him; Frodo spares his life and binds him with a promise to guide them, while Sam remains deeply suspicious. Gollum, torn between his old craving for the ring and a grudging loyalty to Frodo, leads them across the Dead Marshes, a haunted bog where the faces of ancient dead seem to float beneath the water. They come to the Black Gate, the northern entrance to Mordor, and find it shut fast and heavily guarded, impossible to pass; on the way they watch fierce men from the south marching to join Sauron's muster. Gollum tells them of another way in, a secret path far to the south, and, having no better choice, Frodo agrees to trust him and turn aside toward it.

Following Gollum south through the green land of Ithilien, the hobbits are captured by a company of Gondor's rangers led by Faramir, the brother of Boromir. Faramir questions them and learns of Boromir's death and, by a slip of Sam's, of the ring they carry. Unlike his brother, he masters the temptation and swears he would not take the thing even if he found it lying in the road. He shelters them at a hidden refuge behind a waterfall. There Gollum is caught fishing in a forbidden pool below, and Faramir, understanding that Frodo needs the creature as a guide, spares his life at Frodo's plea rather than have his men shoot him. Warning them that the path Gollum means to take is evil and rumored to be guarded by a nameless terror, Faramir nonetheless lets the three go on, giving them supplies and his blessing.

Gollum guides the hobbits past the old cross-roads and up toward the high pass of Cirith Ungol, climbing a long series of steep stairs while secretly plotting to betray them. He briefly wavers toward pity, but Sam's mistrustful words harden him. Leading them into a black tunnel through the mountains, Gollum abandons them to Shelob, a monstrous ancient spider that lairs there. Shelob stings Frodo, who falls cold and paralysed; Sam, believing his master dead, fights the spider off with Frodo's sword and the phial of light from Galadriel, driving her back wounded. Torn by grief and duty, Sam takes the ring and the quest upon himself. But orcs come down from the tower above and carry Frodo's body away, and Sam, following invisibly, overhears them say that Frodo is not dead at all but only poisoned and will wake. The book ends with Sam alone and desperate outside the shut gate of the enemy's tower, his master a prisoner within.

The Two Towers ends with its two strands left on the edge of crisis. In the west, the immediate threats have been beaten: Saruman is broken and shut in his tower at Isengard, his army destroyed at Helm's Deep, and Rohan is roused and allied with Gandalf. But the far greater power of Sauron has not yet been faced, and after Pippin's rash look into the enemy's seeing-stone drew the Dark Lord's eye, Gandalf has ridden with the hobbit to the threatened city of Minas Tirith, expecting Mordor's assault to fall on Gondor next. Aragorn, Theoden, and the others are left to gather their strength for the war to come. In the east, the situation is dire. Frodo has been stung by the great spider Shelob and carried off, paralysed, into the orc-tower of Cirith Ungol. Sam, who briefly took up the ring believing his master dead, has learned from the orcs' own talk that Frodo lives and is only poisoned, but he is now alone, poorly armed against a garrison, and shut outside the tower gate with the ring still to be destroyed. Both quests hang unresolved: the war for Gondor about to begin, and the ring-bearer a captive deep in enemy land.