The Maahes of the Open Door. Tekle-Abay took the mantle just after the kingdom changed its faith and sent an army down the Nile to break Meroë, the Pride's oldest seat. The world was loud with new loyalties. Kings wanted priests to bless their wars, priests wanted the Pride's rites forbidden or approved, and every faction wanted a Maahes on its side.
He said no to all of them. He moved his seat out of the royal city and into the gorges of the Blue Nile, and he set down a rule that the Pride would follow for the rest of the age: the Open Door. The Pride serves no throne and no temple. It will shelter a slayer of any faith, and it will take no side in any quarrel between them.
He kept the rule for 39 years. He was killed in the gorges in 400, in a night fight against a brood that had used the confusion of the faith's arrival to hide itself among the pilgrims. He fought it alone, and he won.
What he left behind: the Open Door, and the Blue Nile seat.
