Chapter 9: A Short History of the Planet Part 3

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At the edge of the abyss, teetering on the brink, the Turncoat opened the sluice gates. See how the visitors make words. And words can make paper. Keep your hieroglyphs. Keep your symbols. Use the words. Golden words. Even the wild-eyed, untamed Doers sensed riches.

A new Guild. The Guild of Alchemists and Doers. Words and action. Voices and movement.

The Guilds went back to business. It had always been thus. The third paradox – endless and yet respectful warfare – just another Guild for the jousting season. And the Guilds knew that this newcomer was not as strong as it believed. The Turncoat told them. The visitors distrusted the Experimenters who glued the new Guild together. The Doers observed the mercenaries’ bloodlust with horror. Schism. Headlong hunger for words. Purpose, principle and revolution were forgotten. It was now about gold. And where men lust, men can be manipulated.

The refugee worked his spell. Became an Alchemist, undertook alchemy himself. Turned the alchemy against itself. Powerful science. For it was Alchemy that caught the gold, made the paper, produced the power. The mercenaries lusted, thirsted and hungered. They were easy meat.

The history of the Guild was re-written. Careful airbrushing of past alliances, now mere memories of inconvenience. In time the Turncoat became the venerable aged one. The Guild master, a Great Think. Even the Experimenters acquiesced as the Guild adapted and adopted paradox 2 and 2(i). All paper is accumulative and none is to be replaced, even where such old paper is manifestly untrue, because old paper has been generated by the revered aged ones and must be respected. The Guilds breathed again. This they could understand.

Out on the margins, the outlaw lands of the weird and the doings, a few scratched a living in the draughty halls of the past. The wild parties, the shared cause were just bleak memories. The wrestling rings and combat arenas where Alchemists, Experimenters and Doers of the past honed their skills grew dusty with neglect. The halls were empty of Alchemists, the mercenaries gone and all but a handful of Experimenters still lingered.

A few Doers began to trickle back to the margins, licking the wounds of a conflict that none admitted was even happening. For the Doers had become the Guild serfs, excluded from the priesthood, denied their share of the spoils. The Turncoat had been thorough. He knew the threat, moved carefully in the light and the shadows, his mercenaries strong. He used the Paradoxes carefully. Paradoxically. Paper was lost, not replaced or accumulated. Aged Doers were forgotten not venerated. War was never declared. Yet the Doers were erased from the Guild.

The remaining and the returned gathered shell-shocked at the margins. They had sought to break the Guilds and now the Guilds had broken them A new caste had risen high to join the interminable inter Guild wars of the past. Business as usual. No moulds broken. The Guild of Alchemists (and Doers).

The inhabitants of the margins became ever more wild and lawless. They lived outside the mainstream in a way few could remember from before. Nursing their wounds and cursing the duplicity of the Turncoat and his duped mercenaries. A few stole back into the Guild from time to time. Returned empty handed or gave up and took the gold. Their young disorganised and intemperate, their aged dead.

In all this time a small light burned on the margins, in the gassy swamps of the outlaw lands of the weird and the doings. Weak and flickering it was ignored but never extinguished. Alchemists no longer needed fire. Doers sought solace in anger.

The light shone faintly.
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