(The second novel in the series, In The Red Lord's Reach, was first published in 1989 as a mass-market paperback from Signet Books and as a 1992 UK hardcover from Grafton, having been first serialized in 1988 as three monthly installments in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.)

Born to Exile concerns the adventures of a wandering minstrel called Alaric, who possesses the otherwise unknown ability to teleport.

Born with preternatural powers, the infant Alaric had been found by foster parents abandoned on a hillside, newborn and naked, with a bloody, severed hand clutching his ankles.

Older and with those powers on full display, he suddenly found himself rejected by his foster family, branded a witch-child.

On this journey, he encounters the craggy towers and shining spires of a distant castle, like some gleaming vision in one of his songs.