Userhat-Seti

Accepted a royal appointment; vampires infiltrated the Pride through it and poisoned the grove-keepers' oaths

The only Maahes in the roll to lose the mantle. Userhat-Seti took it at the height of the empire's glory, when the Pride was the richest it had ever been and Takhat-Mut's rule was more than a century old. Memory had dulled. The rule was repeated at every recitation, but few people any longer remembered what had made it necessary.

He was a skilled hunter and a charming man, and the royal court in the new northern capital loved him. In his third year, they offered him an appointment: Master of the Night Watch, a state office with a salary, a staff and the full authority of the crown behind it. It seemed harmless. It seemed, even, like a gift. The Pride's work would be recognised and funded for the first time. He accepted.

It took only a few years for the cost to appear. The Night Watch answered to the court. Slayers were given orders by officials with no knowledge of the Pride. And the Children of Apep, who had been waiting for exactly this, moved quietly into the new office. They placed agents on the Watch's staff, read its reports and began to shape its orders. The first grove-keeper's oath was broken in his fifth year in office, and resin began to be diverted, then sold, then lost.

The mantle began to leave him before he understood why. His lion-sense faded. His boundary-sense dulled. The echoes of the Roll fell silent. In 1197 BCE, at a recitation of the Roll in Thebes, he found that he could not recite it. The mantle had declined him.

What he left behind: a warning. Every Maahes after him learned his story before they learned their first oath.

"He did not fall. He was given a seat, and he sat down." A saying of the Pride, about Userhat-Seti