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After crossing the Great Mountains, I saw before me, to the west, a vast and sprawling plain. Many great rivers crossed its fertile fields, teeming at that time of year with wheat and cotton. Yet it has no cities to speak of–only small villages scattered about. The simple folk of the foothills had told me that the land held many great ruins–vast cities of stone that now stood empty and crumbling, inhabited only by the owls and jackals. Some of them even claimed to see the ruins with their own eyes and gave awed descriptions. I was intrigued, and I asked my guide to show me the ruins, but he only scowled and shuddered.
“They are cursed,” he said. “Ask me no more of them.”
The foothill-folk had warned me of that–of how my guide’s people saw their own land, and especially the ruins, as cursed. They had also warned me never to call the land “the Red Sky Country” among its people. It was a name some foreigners used for the country, a very old name of an origin none cared to guess. But according to the foothill-folk, the very mention of that name here would send the inhabitants into fits of rage or trembling. Some were rumored to kill any foreigner who dared utter the name.
Of course, that intrigued me further, and from the moment I first glimpsed the plain, I tried to divine the source of its name. I found the task difficult, indeed impossible. I saw no red sky except at sunset, and it shone no redder than in any other land. Nothing else provided a clue, either–not the clouds, nor the trees, nor the smoke from the village kitchen-fires.
At last, one evening, my curiosity overcame my fear. I asked my guide frankly whence came the name. He shuddered again and chided me, his brow wrinkled with consternation.
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