The Singers have many special abilities, the most important of which is knowledge of the Songs of Power: Challa for sleep, Kashe for laughter, Shi for sadness, Aushan for fear and Yehn for death.

They were stopped by Rialle's novice son Renn and Shaiala, a girl raised by centaurs, and it appeared that Frazhin was drowned by naga while trying to escape.

Promising final year novice Kyarra is disappointed when she alone in her class is forbidden from going to the beach to try to contact the merlee about the disappearance of Rialle.

He does as he is asked, but Rialle's songs begin to break the Starmaker's hold on him, and when he is released he attempts to make contact with wild quetzal, getting himself and his friend Sky Swooper in trouble.

Night Plume faithfully passes on Rialle's message, including a warning that Frazhin is trying to poison the Echorium, and that he saw Kyarra vanish into green light - a sign Renn recognises as being Shaiala's work.

Telling him about Frazhin, Azri agrees they must seek him out and attack, but the Singers must first fulfill their obligation to Kyarra and head to the Purple Plains to look for her.

As the prophecy is spoken, Frazhin's quetzal attack the camp and, in the confusion, Kyarra frees Jilian and escapes with Speaks Many Tongues into the forest.

Each girl asks a question: Shaiala successfully learns that the centaurs are uncorruptible because they do not hatch from eggs, but when Kyarra attempts to discover how to heal her mother, the memory trance is interrupted and instead she receives a summons from Frazhin.

Speaks Many Tongues warns that Frazhin is planning to use the yellow flowers gathered by Night Plume's flock to travel into the quetzal Memoryplace and replace it with one of his own making, in which Singers will no longer exist.

The next day, the army travels into the Forest and surrounds the volcano where Frazhin has made his Temple, which is beginning to erupt as he prepares to enter the Memoryplace.

Night Plume is horrified to see the bodies of the eldest and youngest quetzal, who were useless for the memory trance, along with Sky Swooper, punished for his disappearance by having her wings cut off before she was killed.

Within the Fane, they will use the Memoryplace - its power heightened by the captive quetzal and the yellow flower drug sent to the Isle of the Echoes and Silvertown - to change history so that Yashra is healed and the Singers do not exist.

Feeling they have no choice, Renn, Rialle, Caell, Night Plume and a newly healed Kherron sing Yehn, hoping that it will break Frazhin's power.

Five years later, Kyarra wakes from the Yehn with the help of the forest people's potions, and is greeted by a reformed Lady Yashra, also healed, along with Night Plume, Caell, Jilian and Rialle.