Jherek offered his coin purse. "Take what you feel is just."

The priest regarded him with renewed interest. "Pardon me for saying so, boy, but you look as though that pouch contains the last coins you have."

Jherek felt another sharp pang of embarrassment. The pouch in his hand looked pitifully slim, and he'd been so proud of it that afternoon when the caravan had arrived in Baldur's Gate. "If it's not enough, I'll bring more at another time if you'll trust me for it."

The priest shook his head, reaching out and curling the pouch back in the young sailor's hand. "You misunderstand me, boy. Lathander doesn't just take from a community; he gives back. Else how can he work the miracles with the new beginnings he speaks of?"

Still, Jherek felt bad. The priests at Ilmater's shrine hadn't dissuaded him of making a donation there, and he'd gotten nothing from them except apologies.

"Just remember Lathander, boy," the priest said. "The Morninglord knows the wheel turns. We all give and get alternately, each as to their needs. Every day is a beginning of some kind for everyone."

Jherek nodded.

"Stings your pride, doesn't it, lad?" an old man's voice croaked behind Jherek. "Taking things offered you is hard."

When he turned and saw the old man who'd addressed him, Jherek swallowed an angry retort. The young sailor couldn't guess how old the man was. Time had marched scores of hard years over him. The man's face sagged with thick wrinkles, and his fevered blue eyes peered up from gristled pits. A fringe of gray hair gnarled around his head. He wore deep scarlet robes that marked him as a priest. Both hands shook, whether from age or illness Jherek couldn't say, and provided him a precarious balance.

"Do you have something to say, lad?" the old man asked, his face stern in spite of the loose flesh on his face.

"Brother Cadiual," the first priest said, "what are you doing out of bed?" He sounded very concerned and walked over quickly to the old man's side. "I gave strict orders that you were not to be disturbed."

Jherek smelled the illness on the old man and breathed shallowly through his mouth to avoid it.

"I'm here doing Lathander's work," Cadiual snapped. "As I have ever done during my life."

"But you're not well."

"Ghauryn," the old man said in a hoarse whisper that stopped the other priest's objections immediately, "I was running this temple long before you ever suckled at your mother's breast. Ill not suffer your insubordination now."

The other priest nodded, taking a half-step back. "As you command and Lathander wills."

Cadiual eyed Jherek. "Who are you, boy?"

"I'm called Malorrie, a sailor from Velen."

The rheumy old eyes searched Jherek's face. "What brought you here?"

Jherek showed him the bandages and balms Ghauryn had given him. "I've got a wounded friend."

Cadiual waved the answer away in irritation. "No. Before that. What brought you to Baldur's Gate?"

"I came with a caravan from Athkatla."

"Yet you're not from Amn, and by your own professed statement, you're a sailor. What were you doing with a caravan?"

Jherek felt very uncomfortable, suddenly realizing he had the attention of many of the priests in the back room. "It was the only way I could get here."

"Again," the old man said in his cracking, hoarse voice. "Why did you choose to come here, at this time when the sea itself rises up against us?"

"I came because I wanted to learn more about myself."

"See," Ghauryn interrupted, "you've been under the influence of that fever again, Cadiual. He's given you your answer." He reached for the old man's shoulder.

Angrily, Cadiual swept his cane toward the other priest, making him step back again. He returned his attention to Jherek. "You came because you wanted to learn what about yourself?"

Jherek silently wished he'd never stepped foot into the temple of Lathander. He wished he could muster the ill manners it would take to simply walk away from the old man and his piercing gaze. "Where I should go from here."

"You were sent here, weren't you? By a divination that you couldn't possibly comprehend."

Jherek didn't reply, feeling that he was being the butt of some bit of humor he didn't understand. He tried to take a step and leave.

"You think I'm some foolish old man, don't you?" Cadiual said.

"No," Jherek answered politely. "I think perhaps you've got me confused with someone else."

"Nay. I was told long before you were born that you would one day find your way here. A sailor, I was told, shorn from the sea and bereft of home, a man hardly more than a boy who runs from the bloody shadow of his father. A boy seeking his future to outrun his past, who was needy, yet hated to take on any help from others. To accomplish his task, there was much help he'd have to take along the way. Learning to accept that would be only one of his lessons." He paused. "Though we think we live our lives alone, there is no one of us completely alone, boy. The gods overlook us all."

Astonishment froze Jherek in place. There was no way the priest could know all that, unless he truly was mad and his powers of divination were confused by his insanity.

"Still, there is one way to be certain." Cadiual reached inside his robe and took out a soft leather bag that showed decades of wear. He opened it and poured yellowed ivory bone splinters into his hand. "These are dragon bones. Lathander himself saw to it I was given these while still yet a child. They've guided me for years. Let me have your hand."

Reluctantly, Jherek stuck his hand out. When the priest's hand wrapped around his, he felt the shakes the old man was experiencing, and the thin finger bones as sticklike as the dragon bones the priest poured into his hand.

Cadiual gripped Jherek's hand in both his shaking ones, then closed his eyes and began praying to Lathander. The heat that suddenly flamed through his flesh surprised the young sailor. He tried to pull away, but the old priest gripped him more surely than he'd thought.

The old priest finished his prayer, and the priests around him echoed his final appreciative sentiments toward the Morninglord. The rheumy eyes gazed up at Jherek.

"You are the one," the old man said. "The one who has come to Baldur's Gate at the time the sea has risen up against all of Faerun. The one who will somehow find a way to stem the tide of dark reaping."

Jherek immediately shook his head, feeling trapped. "No. You've got me confused with someone else. That can't be right. You don't know who I am. Or what I am."

"I don't have to know," the old priest said. "All I have to do is believe in Lathander and let his hand guide mine. It's all I've ever needed. There is a final proof." He took back the splinters of dragon bones and put them back in the pouch, then he took from his robe an oval pearl encased in a gold disk nearly as large as Jherek's palm.

The gold was soft and buttery, showing numerous scratches and hard usage. As the old priest turned the object in his fingers, Jherek noted that the flat side of the pearl had been cut, raising a trident overlaying a silhouetted conch shell from the gemstone.

"I was told by the man who gave me this all those years ago," Cadiual said, "to give this to the young man who appeared in this temple on the night the sea powers wended their way into Baldur's Gate to strike against us."

"Why?" Jherek asked.

"You must stem the tide." Cadiual held the half-pearl out for him to take.

"No," Jherek said hoarsely when he realized the priest meant to give him the gem. "I'm not who you think I am. I can't be."

"Take the gem."

"I can't." But Jherek wanted to so badly he could barely restrain himself from plucking it up. Such a destiny must lie before the person that gem was truly meant for. He'd no longer have to be known as Jherek Wolf's-get, son of the bloodiest pirate of the Nelanther Isles. But to stem the tide of sahuagin that ravaged the Sword Coast? How was that going to be possible?