[1] When gathering herbs near the quarry in Mossflower Woods, the young Redwallers Tansy the common hedgehog and Arven the Eurasian red squirrel come across a mysterious skeleton among the rocks.

They are disoriented in a rainstorm and after failing to return to the abbey before the breaking of the storm are rescued by Martin II the mouse, son of Mattimeo and grandson of Matthias.

Tansy quickly leads curious Redwallers back to the quarry to examine the mysterious skeleton, and along the way, they meet two travellers: the irrepressible hare Cleckstarr Lepus Montisle and his barn owl friend Gerul.

Ublaz Mad-Eyes, a large, sinewy European pine marten with a hypnotic stare, gathers an army of barbaric monitor lizards and trident-wielding searats.

Far away on the western shores, Grath Longfletch, a strong female otter, was at the gates of the Dark Forest before being found by a pair of bank voles, who nurse her back to health.

Tansy, Rollo, and Martin II, along with the hedgehog maid's friends Craklyn the squirrel and Piknim the mouse, begin a search for the six exquisite pearls.

Viola is sent back to Redwall with two shrews to guide her, and Grath, Clecky, Martin, and the Log-a-Log's two sons use discarded vermin boats to form the Freebeast, a double-outrigger vessel in which they pursue Lask to Sampetra.

Initial attempts at negotiation fail, due to the double-dealing of the pair, and when Ublaz tries to have Rasconza assassinated, Sampetra is plunged into all-out war.

On the Waveworm, Durral is underfed and mistreated, but the ferret captain Romsca protects him from the fierce violence and hunger of Lask's cruel monitor lizards.

By the time the ship arrives, he is so weak from hunger and thirst that he is hallucinating; Ublaz, furious that the reinforcements he was waiting for are dead, takes the Abbot hostage.

The young hedgehog, realising the pearls lead only to greed and violence and bring nothing but misery and death to all who own them, casts them out into the sea to be forever lost.