JANET E. MORRIS lives on Cape Cod. The wife of Christopher Crosby Morris, she was born in 1946. She is a novelist, nonfiction writer, editor, horse breeder, policy analyst and musician. The Golden Sword is the second book in her bestselling series, The Silistra Quartet, preceded by High Couch of Silistra and followed by Wind from the Abyss, and The Carnelian Throne.