The vegetive kingdom: baeldock grove

From Chapter 29: Tuuke questions Maeduul about the health of Julyeis

Maeduul gave him an intelligent look. "She's been very ill, Guardsman. But yes, I've talked to her. She has a good story to celebrate: the Servants headed north when they left the city - she told me about walking through Sama-Lovare's Halls ..." "Whose halls?" He watched the prow of the boat edge into a new channel, closer to the western bank. He had argued against this travel policy: it was too slow for his taste, and often took the boat too close to the jungle walls, but the vessel's store of electricity was limited - even with all the sunlight sails hoisted; motoring upstream through the deeper channels took too much power. "Ah, yes. That's the Servant name for the baeldock groves - I've always wanted to visit one. This one was very long, she said: two or three days they spent walking its length." "I know the one you mean. It's been growing towards the city for decades. Is that why she's ill?" "Yes. 'Never drink the pillars' sweat', we say, but she must have forgotten. Her stomach has stopped bleeding, but she's still in a lot of pain." He could imagine: he'd walked through a number of baeldock groves when he was a soldier - corridors of vaulting, silent wood winding through the jungles, slowly killing everything within their path. Someone had told him once that a grove was a single plant, but his imagination couldn't accommodate such a fanciful idea. Whatever the grove was, it added something to the rain that trickled down its over-long, grown-from-the-canopy trunks, making the water acidic. Drinking the fluid often led to blisters in the throat and stomach.