story identification - Fantasy novel with terrifying trees where people were sacrificed to them cocooned alive and put inside them

Things I remember:

One of the characters was a very very old wizard (magician?) who was married to a much younger woman. I think he had some kind of award that was "the Void of Something"?

She came from a culture with headhunting and had a collection of skulls. With the right drumming, she could communicate with the souls/spirits still attached to those skulls. I think one of them was her "best enemy". I seem to recall that she came from a culture where women had multiple husbands - I think she might have had several husbands before, but now there's just Old Wizard

There were at least two characters who came from a jungle where drumming was used for communication. I vaguely remember a boy and a girl who were maybe coupling off and might have been assuming a parental role for some other kids?

Their culture worshipped these giant trees and sacrificed people to them

It turned out that the people sacrificed to the trees were wrapped in some kind of cocoon and attached to the insides of the trees, still alive (I found this SO DISTURBING)

The Old Wizard and his wife were looking for a lost library or civilization or something which turned out to be in the jungle

They traveled in some kind of flying boat/ship, but I think the trees caused them to crash?

I remember that the Old Wizard dies at the end

It may have been the second book in a series

I think it was written by a woman

I think I read it somewhere between 1999 and 2006

Comments

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When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

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