Once upon a time in the kingdom of Fantasia, there were two noble lords, Lord Wiser and Lord Mortimer. They had been childhood friends and as young men had fought alongside each other, protecting the borders of their kingdom. The estates of these nobles were separated by a strip of high moorland which was owned by the king. On many a day the two old friends would meet on the moor whilst out riding, and talk about the good old days of their youth.

Only as they entered their later years did the two nobleman become rivals, it all started with the coronation of the new king, both lords sent fine gifts, and each believed that theirs was the superior gift. That was the beginning of their rivalry. Over the years they each built taller towers onto their castles to outdo the other. Lord Mortimer built a magical hedge maze that shifted its paths at random, he promised a gold coin to whomever completed it. Lord Wiser acquired one hundred white peacocks to roam his estate. Nobody won that round of one-upmanship, as the peacocks savaged the garden, terrorised the staff and disturbed everyone’s sleep for miles around. In the end the peacocks were served at a very elaborate banquet. Meanwhile Lord Mortimer never paid out on the completion of his maze challenge, as no one ever emerged from the centre of the maze. Most who attempted it returned through the entrance after a few days looking ragged and terrified. When a couple of brave adventurers did not return at all, the maze was torn down in an attempt to find them, but no trace of them was ever found.

Before long both lords had almost ruined themselves with the endless expenses incurred from trying to outdo the other. The gifts they were sending on a weekly basis to the king were beginning to pile up. The king couldn’t ignore this new bitter rivalry between two lords who had been such good friends to his father. In the end he sent for them and commanded them to settle their differences, this proved too difficult for them as neither one would concede on any front, the arguments carried on back and forth for days.

It was suggested to the king that he should simply separate these two, command that neither of them should ever sent gifts to him again, and that they must concentrate on managing their estates responsibly. This sage advice came from the sergeant of the castle garrison, who was used to dealing with troublesome people. After the proclamation was laid down, Lord Wiser announced that he would do so happily, as long as he never had to see Lord Mortimer again. Lord Mortimer agreed wholeheartedly, then he upped the anti by saying that he wished to never see anything belonging to his rival ever again. This wouldn’t have been a problem as the moor separated the two estates, but as each of them had built tall towers they could now easily see their neighbour. Returning to the sergeant the king asked for a solution to this problem, the man pondered for several minutes, then he used his other talent which was to delegate and suggested the king take this problem to his wizard.

The wizard was a young mage who had trained at the Arcane Tower, his name was Murdoch, he was in his early thirties, with shoulder length curly black hair and a tendency for daydreaming, but that should not mislead you, he was a talented battle mage, specialising in maximum destruction. Like most battle mages he dressed in black robes and was known to paint red marks on his face before entering the fray.

Murdoch was a conscientious wizard so before giving his king an answer for his dilemma Murdoch travelled to the estates in question. He walked for many hours across the moor that separated them. Just before he returned to the king to announced that he could not solve the problem, he spotted five mountain trolls.

The smallest of the trolls was as tall as the roof line on a two-storey house, and the chief troll, who was the largest in this group could have plucked weeds from the roof of the nearby church tower. Whilst the trolls were impressively tall, they were also incredibly wide, an average troll would be two thirds as broad as they were tall. Their boulder shaped heads were slightly embedded into their chests, at about the point a humans’ collarbone would be.

Murdoch explained his dilemma and asked the chief troll for advice. After some consideration and a little debate with his group the chief announced an easy solution. He suggested that they should bring rocks down from the neighbouring mountains and build a wall between the two estates, a wall that was high enough to block all view from one castle to the other. Murdoch thought this was a good idea, but he knew a little about mountain trolls and he told them that he would supervise their work and tell them when the wall was high enough for his liking. It was early afternoon when the trolls returned from the mountains with their first load of stone, Murdoch watched them scrape away the soil and lay down each of the foundation stones. By early evening the wall was already twelve feet high and nearly as wide. It had been a long day for the wizard, as he had ridden down from the capital at dawn and had spent many hours pondering his King’s dilemma, seeing that the trolls were working hard he decided to have a quick nap.

Like so many things that seemed like a good idea at the time, this desire for a nap proved otherwise for the wizard. Murdoch woke at sunrise, actually he woke an hour after sunrise, as it took that long for the sun’s rays to creep over the wall, that the trolls were still building. Staggering to his feet he took a few steps backwards to get the wall into view and had to take a few more, the structure was now eighty or ninety feet high, and so wide that it covered most of the moor.

“What have you done!” screamed Murdock, “You were only supposed to build a bloody wall, not a bloody mountain.”

“You said that you would tell us when to stop, once it was high enough,” argued the chief troll.

“Didn’t you think to wake me?”

Slowly the chief troll scratched his head, trolls didn’t sleep at night, they only slept in the winter for several months, they didn’t understand about humans need to sleep for a few hours every day. Seeing the troll’s obvious confusion Murdock didn’t bother to argue, he simply paid them the promised gold and sent them on their way.

It’s not known what the trolls did with their gold coins, after all they didn’t eat normal food, preferring to eat rocks, and they drank rainwater, they didn’t wear clothing, mosses and firms clung to their rocky crust and some of the older trolls appeared to have great beards of hanging lichen. Perhaps the trolls ate the coins considering them to be tasty snacks.

As the five trolls disappeared back into the mountains, Murdock pondered his new dilemma, he knew several spells that could shatter rocks or turn them to lava. So, all day long he worked away at blasting and melting the stones into small pieces of rubble so that men could take it away. By the end of the day, he had barely chipped away at the corners, then he lay on the flat top of the wall out of breath and exhausted.

When the sun rose the next day Murdock returned to the capital and told the king of the enormous wall that lay between Lord Wiser’s and Lord Mortimer’s Estates. The king was delighted to hear that such a large wall had been built, that it would forever block the views and keep his squabbling lords from ever seeing one another.

 

It said that Lord Wiser and Lord Mortimer never spoke to one another again, and as far as anyone knows they never even laid eyes upon each other. The king was happy that he was not being inundated with dancing sheep, golden songbirds, magical cloaks or elaborate clocks that never told the right time. The wizard Murdock took the credit for the work of the trolls and became quite famous throughout Fantasia, he went on to contribute to many more stories and legends.

The only people who were unhappy were the locals, who suddenly had a flat-topped mountain between the respective villages of Moortown and Wiveless. Whilst their ruling lords had had their grievances, the villagers had got on well enough. Now they had to take a long detour around the new obstruction. Before long the locals took to calling the wall ‘Murdock’s Scone’ as that’s what it most resembles.

It’s still burnt on one side where the wizard had tried to melt the rocks and there’s the odd black lump here and there. Whether or not the wizard Murdock was a good or bad cook is lost to history, but people presume he wasn’t judged by the mess he made of his scone.

 

The end.