Hi! I've been trying to remember what this one was called for a long time, and it's vanished from my box-of-books-I-read-many-moons ago. I read it when I was a child, so it can't have been published later than the mid-90s (and is probably from earlier than that).The book is YA fiction. The premise is that the protagonist, a young male, lives / works in a kind of "dormitory" or possibly orphanage for boys. The boys are made to climb up onto giant webs and harvest the silk excreted by giant spiders - whose bite is poisonous.Someone (probably the protagonist) is bitten by one of the spiders - this is treated like a death sentence. However, I remember him being treated by an elderly man (who lives in the town neighbouring the dormitory).It's definitely not set in a "modern" era - I remember oil lamps, and possibly meade.Thanks to anyone who can help!
Marcus Mustard is an apprentice in the caverns of Castle Dis - tending and feeding the monstrous, deadly, silk-spinning spiders whose appetite for human flesh can be staunched only by magic. But the power of magic is breaking down, and spells are going terrifyingly wrong.