Free The End of the Game by Sheri S. Tepper

craven tricks. Put the blindfolds back on them and get them out of here.” Well, he was back in his own dream of events again.
    Murzy, however, was not distracted. She tapped her chest several times, mysteriously, then was blindfolded and led away. Grommy went with her, treacherously abandoning me, and I wasn’t sad to see him go. That was one less thing to worry about. I sat down quietly before my own tent and waited for the men to eat their dinner.
    They did everything else. They talked, argued, stamped around. Porvius made a small earthquake, just to illustrate his displeasure, during which I lay down and whimpered. If I’d appeared poised, it would have made him angrier, I figured. At last they filled their bowls, giving me none; since Porvius said someone being beheaded in the morning didn’t need dinner. Then they ate. Then they sat, and drank, and talked, and talked, and talked. I was wondering what I’d done wrong. Were the seeds not ripe? Had I dug up the wrong roots by mistake? Had I ... Not for the first time, I longed for a Talent. For the first time I began to wonder if I would ever get one. Not an early one, certainly. I was already past that age.
    At last there were snores from the campfire, and I sighed, only then realizing how impure the mixture must have been, which meant, of course, there was no telling how much time I had before they woke.
    I did a spell, Mothwings Go Spinning, picking a rainhat berry out of the bush and sending it circling, wider and wider, tilting and tumbling. “Touch all,” I muttered under my breath, keeping it up until it banged Porvius Bloster on the head where he lay, him and then his henchmen. Any Tragamor could have done the same with his Talent, but this was a movement spell and according to Sarah I could do it very well, better than most Wize-ards. I liked the spell because it took no paraphernalia, only certain words and a few small, precise gestures to pick up any smallish thing and send it flying. So I banged upon Bloster and his men enough to be sure they were soundly asleep, then picked up a rock and began bashing at the leather tether.
    It seemed to take hours. The leather was tough. All it wanted to do was crush, not cut. Finally it came apart. I took a knife from Porvius’s belt, considered killing all four of them but couldn’t quite get up the gumption to do it, picked up the bundle Murzy had brought for me, and made for the horses. I had never ridden anything that size before, but I wasn’t about to take off on foot and have them following me. I tied all four horses together, then led the first one over to a tall stump and climbed on top. He was well schooled, thank the old gods, and didn’t act up. It was a cloudy night; I had no idea which way was home; the important thing seemed to be to get gone.
    So, I got.
    5
    It was dark and very misty when I left. There was a long, straight canyon which appeared to be the shortest way out of the place. It seemed to go generally east, though I couldn’t see beyond the first gentle curve. The horses and I went that way and kept going until light, during most of which time it rained. I hoped the rain would wash away the hoofprints. When it got a little bit light, I took one horse over a ridge and turned him loose. He went off into the slush very nicely. Horses and I had always understood each other very well, and he was probably thinking about hay and a warm stable. The other three of us went a bit farther, then another one went loose, and the last one just before noon. It may have been noon. There was a sort of general lightness at the top of the sky which might have meant that. Or it might have meant the clouds were thinner there, who knows. If anyone were following me—if they weren’t Seers or Pursuivants or some other finder kind of Gamesman—they might follow one of the loose horses instead of the one I was on.
    The last horse and I went on together a bit more, but by that time it was really difficult to stay