Songs of Power can exist in many artistic forms, including music, poetry, dance, art, architecture, and some less obvious creative fields.

The book's present story follows the experiences of a 16 year-old young man named Michael Perrin, a would be poet, who lives close to Waltiri and befriends him.

Following the instructions on a piece of paper he found inserted in the book, Michael enters Clarkham's house, which has been vacant for decades and, through a creepy garden and back-alley acting as planar gates, Perrin finds himself in Sidhedark, a world inhabited by a powerful race of beings calling themselves the Sidhe (pronounced "shee"), who are divided into many sub-races (Faers, Umbrals, Riverines, Meteorals, Pelagals, Arborals and Amorphals) of different shapes and magical abilities, and are associated with many ancient human myths about fairy folks.

There Michael is befriended by a former teacher, Savarin, and learns that the humans are barely tolerated by the Sidhe, who detached a small army of riders led by Alyons the Wickmaster to act as wardens of the treaty.

He returns to the Isomage's house to talk to Lamia, asking her how he can get home, and she said that he will need training in order to make his way back to Earth.

They train him with exercises that seem pointless and incomprehensible, and also provide fragments of lore hinting at a primordial magical war between the humans and the Sidhe that is at the origin of the current distrust among the races and of the general status of both Earth and Sidhedark realms.

The people of Euterpe are not allowed to produce music of any kind, for fear they may create some Songs of Power, and they get only very limited supplies of wood and clothing.

One night a number of creatures called Riverines and Umbrals raid Halftown and kidnap three of the Breeds who lived there, taking them to serve Adonna, a sort of god of the Sidhe, by bleeding them of magic.

They attack and try to take also Michael, but he barely survives because is discarded as being a mere inferior human, unfit for the service to Adonna; the young man makes his way back to the Crane Women.

To provide Michael with a basic way of defense against such attacks the Crane Women intentionally place the young man on a trafficked path used by Meteorals, where he is easily spotted by them.

Only a magical powder called 'sani' can allow for a safe passage, and further protections are necessary to avoid being lured by the monsters who crave for the souls of the passers-by.

Michael also learns that the humans of Euterpe are secretly working on a plan to rebel and escape from the Pact Lands into the rest of Sidhedark, where they hope to find a place to live free of Sidhe control.

In the meantime, also Michael's inner powers increase thanks to the Crane Women training, and he becomes able to generate heat and warm from inside and to hide his thoughts and memories from external scrutinies, becoming able to perform a superficial screening of the aura of the other beings.

Now that he has killed a Sidhe, the Crane Women know that his race will not stop until they catch Michael, so they give him what they can, advices on how to access the inner knowledge of unshielded people, how to shed parts of his personality he does not want anymore and how to get some kind of extracorporeal vision.

Michael crosses the Blasted Plane on foot and without protective 'sani' powder, evading the monsters there only by means of using the training the Crane Women gave him.

For a time they established their rule over the humans, leading to the first Breeds to be born - among them the Crane Women - but then most of them left when Adonna, their most powerful mage, created the extradimensional world of Sidhedark for them.

In it dwell a number of Adonna's abortions—failed creations that live out their twisted existences in pain or madness; they were originally buried beneath the ground, but the magical war that created the Plain freed them.

To cross the Plain requires either some form of talisman to repel the abortions or a Sidhe horse, fast enough to outrun them and wise enough to sense and avoid them.

The rest of the Realm contains areas such as: In the lands south-east to the Blasted Plain a major river flows to the north-east for hundreds of miles, crossing in sequence a large forest, the golden prison-valley of Lin Piao, a savannah, the city of Iniyas Trai until reaching the palace of the Isomage, which stands close to the ocean.

The Sidhe first fled to the stars, had strange conflicts with other alien intelligence then the survivors returned to Earth, where humans were living a primitive life.

After establishing there for a while, as masters of the primitive humans and the other defeated races, the Sidhe did not like the wild and untamed place Earth has become after the primordial war, so most of them moved to a world that Tonn created for them.

Albeit the Khan was able to forge a huge empire, the song of power provided to him was not perfect, so he ultimately failed in his ambitions, without knowing he has always been manipulated by the Sidhe of Sidhedark.

Lin Piao, the Spryggla in charge of delivering part of the song of power to Kublai Khan, was punished for his failure and was imprisoned in the valley surrounding his own beautiful palace in Sidhedark.

The Sidhe declared war on the Isomage, burning a large portion of Sidhedark and creating an area now known as the Blasted Plain; the upheavals also released some of Adonna's unwanted creations that it had hidden underground.

Several decades before the book's story begins, he rebels openly against the Sidhe in Sidhedark, starting a magical war in an attempt to stop them from interfering with humanity on Earth.

By the time the book's main story takes place, he has built his impression of the wondrous palace described in "Kubla Khan" and lives there with his concubine and a few retainers.

Alyons was assigned this duty as punishment for stealing a horse from the Irall (Temple of Adonna), a serious crime; by the time they found out, it had imprinted upon him and would recognize no other master, so they could not take it back.

Lin Piao Tai was tasked by the Sidhe with designing the palace of Kubla Khan which was intended to be an architectural Song of Power, transmitted to the emperor in a dream.

Within his valley prison, Lin Piao Tai is free to do as he wishes, and he has built a beautiful palace for himself, but as a further punishment, his magic over matter has been taken from him except relating to objects that are yellow or golden in color.

He escaped capture by Alyons and his coursers and was taken in by a sympathetic Sidhe woman in the females' city of Inyas Trai, under the protection of the Ban of Hours.