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. 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. Wind from the Abyss starts with this . . . Author's Note 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 witheld 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. . . .