All The Write Stuff: Wind From the Abyss

Estri’s life is shattered. Her name, her memories, her past—gone. Pulled into a world of cosmic intrigue and divine manipulation, she must navigate a realm where gods test her resolve.

Wind From the Abyss

The Silistra Quartet Book 3

By Janet Morris

Genre: Dystopian SciFi Fantasy Adventure

Dystopia. Novel series #2 of 4. Fantasy. Science fiction. Allegory. Political.

Wind from the Abyss is the third volume in Janet Morris' classic Silistra Quartet, continuing one woman's quest for self-realization in a distant tomorrow.

Aristocrat. Outcast. Picara. Slave. Ruler ....

She is descended from the masters of the universe. To hold her he challenges the gods themselves.

Praise for Janet Morris' Silistra Quartet:

"The amazing and erotic adventures of the most beautiful courtesan in tomorrow's universe." -- Fred Pohl

"Engrossing characters in a marvelous adventure." -- Charles N. Brown, Locus Magazine.

The best single example of prostitution used in fantasy is Janet Morris' Silsitra series." -- Anne K. Kahler, The Picara: From Hera to Fantasy Heroine.

This Perseid Press Author's Cut Edition is revised and expanded by the author and presented in a format designed to enhance your reading experience with larger, easy-to-read print, more generous margins, and covers designed for these premium editions.

INTERVIEW

What is something unique/quirky about you?

I breed Morgan horses. I consult with Morgan breeders to help them choose breeding combinations to achieve a desired result.

I am also a song writer; I play bass guitar with my husband Chris who sings and plays guitar. We have an album on MCA records. Look for Christopher Crosby Morris on Soundcloud or N1M.com

Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?

I wrote my first novel, High Couch of Silistra in 1975; a friend sent it to an agent who chose to represent me; I had already written the second book in the Silistra Quartet and my agent told me not to disclose that until they finalized the contract for the first one. When the publisher learned of the others, Bantam Books bought the succeeding three. When the fourth book was published, the series already had four million copies in print. Suddenly I was a novelist specializing in environmental, gender, historical and political subjects. In the process, Chris became my editor and ultimately a co-writer. Since then, we have co-authored many books.

Who is your hero and why?

Heraclitus of Ephesus, a pre-socratic philosopher, whose Cosmic Fragments foreshadow our knowledge of reality and how to perceive it. Among his precepts is the statement that change alone is unchanging. I’ve worked Heraclitus’ fragments in here and there throughout our books.

Which of your novels can you imagine being made into a movie?

All of them. I write cinematically, our books are vivid adventures I undertake without knowing the destination. I, the Sun, The Sacred Band, and Outpassage are particularly suited to film. The Threshold Series is a feast of opportunities for today’s special effects creators.

What inspired you, to write Wind from the Abyss?

The Silistra series was a unique departure for me and it included issues of women’s rights in the 70’s before Handmaid’s Tale.

Convince us why you feel Wind from the Abyss is a must read.

The Silistra series in which Wind from the Abyss is book 3 blazed a new trail in science fiction and fantasy, many critics saying that I had created a new pantheon of warrior women giving rise to heroines like Xena. Today it is more important than ever for everyone to accept women in leadership roles and I would like to think we had something to do with gaining them more recognition.

Who designed your book covers?

Most of my covers, including Wind from the Abyss, are realized by Roy Mauritsen, a gifted graphic artist.

Advice to writers?

As for advice to writers, here is all I know: write the story you want to read. Start at the beginning, go to the end, and stop. Seriously. From start to finish you must inhabit the construct in a manner that makes the reader choose to continue; if I, as the writer, can’t feel what it’s like being there, my readers can’t either. So close your eyes, look at your feet where they are standing on the story’s ground; tell me what you see. Tell me what you hear. Ask at the end of each paragraph ‘what happens next?’. If you lose touch with it, wait until you’re back inside it. Tell the story that comes to you, and from you, to me.

EXCERPT

Since, at the beginning of this tale, I did not recollect myself nor retain even the slightest glimmer of such understanding as would have led me to an awareness of the significance of the various occurrences that transpired at the Lake of Horns then, I am adding this preface, though it was no part of my initial conception, that the meaningfulness of the events described by “Khys’ Estri” (as I have come to think of the shadow-self I was while the dharen held my skills and memory in abeyance) not be withheld from you as they were from me.

I knew myself not: I was Estri because the girl Carth supposedly found wandering in the forest stripped of comprehension and identity chose that name. There, perhaps, lies the greatest irony of all, that I named myself anew after Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi, who in reality I had once been. And perhaps it is not irony at all, but an expression of Khys’ humor, an implicit dissertation by him who structured my experiences, my very thoughts, for nearly two years, until his audacity drove him to bring together once more Sereth crill Tyris, past-Slayer, then the outlawed Ebvrasea, then arrar to the dharen himself; Chayin rendi Inekte, cahndor of Nemar, co-cahndor of the Taken Lands, chosen so of Tar-Kesa, and at that time Khys’ puppet-vassal; and myself, former Well-Keepress, tiask of Nemar, and lastly becoming the chaldless outlaw who had come to judgment and endured ongoing retribution at the dharen’s hands. To test his hesting, his power over owkahen, the time-coming-to-be, did Khys put us together, all three, in his Day-Keeper’s city — and from that moment onward, the Weathers of Life became fixed: siphoned into a singular future; sealed tight as a dead god in his mausoleum, whose every move brought him closer to the sum total, obliteration. So did the dharen Khys bespeak it, himself . . .

I. In Mourning for the Unrecollected

The hulion hovered, wings aflap, at the window, butting its black wedge of a head against the pane. Its yellow eyes glowed cruelly, slit-pupiled. Its white fangs, gleaming, were each as long as my forearm.

I screamed. Its tufted ears, flat against its head, twitched. Again and again, toothed mouth open wide, it battered at the window, roaring. Once more I screamed and ran stumbling to the far wall of my prison. I pounded upon the locked doors with my fists, pressing myself against the wood. Sobbing, I turned to face it. The beast’s ears flickered at the sound. Those jaws, which could have snapped me in half, closed. It cocked its head.

I trembled, caught in its gaze. I could retreat no farther. I sank to my knees, moaning, against the door frame.

The beast gave one final snort. Those wings, with a spread thrice the length of a tall man, flapped decisively, and it was gone. When the hulion was no more than a speck in the greening sky, I rose clumsily, shaking, to collect the papers I had strewn across the mat in my terror. They were the arrar Carth’s papers, those he had forgotten in his haste to answer his returning master’s summons.

I knelt upon my hands and knees on the silvery pile, that I might gather the pages and replace them in the tas-sueded folder before Carth returned.

Foolish, I thought to myself, that I had so feared the hulion. It could not have gotten in. I could not get out: It could not get in. Once I had thrown a chair at that impervious clarity. The chair had splintered. With one stout thala leg, as thick as my arm, had I battered upon that window. All I had accomplished was the transformation of chair into kindling. The hulion, I chided myself, could have fared no better.

Hulions, upon occasion, have been known to eat man-flesh. Hulions, furred and winged, fanged and clawed, are the servants of the dharen who rules Silistra. I had had no need to fear. Yet, I thought as I gathered the arrar Carth’s scattered papers, hulions are fearsome. Perhaps if I had been able, as others are, to hear its mind’s intent, I would have felt differently. My fingers, numb and trembling, fumbled for the delicate sheets.

One in particular caught my eye. It was in Carth’s precise hand and headed: “Pre-assessment Monitoring of the Arrar Sereth. Enar Fourth Second, 25,697.”

I had met, once, the arrar Sereth. Upon my birthday, Macara fourth seventh, in the year ’696 had I met him, that night my child had been conceived. I had read of his exploits. He frightened me, killer of killers, enforcer for the dharen, he who wore the arrar: chald of the messenger. Sereth, scarred and lean and taut like some carnivore, who had loved the Keepress Estri, my namesake, and with her brought great change to Silistra in the pass Amarsa, 25,695 — yes, I had met him.

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**Don’t miss the rest of the Silistra Quartet!**

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About the Author

Best selling author Janet Morris began writing in 1976 and has since published more than 30 novels, many co-authored with her husband Chris Morris or others. She has contributed short fiction to the shared universe fantasy series Thieves World, in which she created the Sacred Band of Stepsons, a mythical unit of ancient fighters modeled on the Sacred Band of Thebes. She created, orchestrated, and edited the Bangsian fantasy series Heroes in Hell, writing stories for the series as well as co-writing the related novel, The Little Helliad, with Chris Morris. She wrote the bestselling Silistra Quartet in the 1970s, including High Couch of Silistra, The Golden Sword, Wind from the Abyss, and The Carnelian Throne. This quartet had more than four million copies in Bantam print alone, and was translated into German, French, Italian, Russian and other languages. In the 1980s, Baen Books released a second edition of this landmark series. The third edition is the Author's Cut edition, newly revised by the author for Perseid Press. Most of her fiction work has been in the fantasy and science fiction genres, although she has also written historical and other novels. Morris has written, contributed to, or edited several book-length works of non-fiction, as well as papers and articles on nonlethal weapons, developmental military technology and other defense and national security topics.

Janet says: 'People often ask what book to read first. I recommend "I, the Sun" if you like ancient history; "The Sacred Band," a novel, if you like heroic fantasy; "Lawyers in Hell" if you like historical fantasy set in hell; "Outpassage" if you like hard science fiction; "High Couch of Silistra" if you like far-future dystopian or philosophical novels. I am most enthusiastic about the definitive Perseid Press Author's Cut editions, which I revised and expanded.'

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