Note: This is an interlude, taking place mostly before the series-basically, a look at how Confessors are trained, from Kahlan's point of view.

Lessons

"You will all be tempted. You will desire to use your power for personal gain. You must resist. Every Confessor before you has faced this same temptation, and been stronger for her resistance. If you allow your power to overwhelm you, you will lose your compassion—your soul."

Mother Confessor Serena paused, surveying each young Confessor—there were still many of them then—gravely.

Kahlan shivered when that gaze lighted upon her, guiltily conscious of the transgression her power had already led her into. (The bound soul of her first real friend, apart from her sister Dennee, haunted her.)

Beside her, Dennee looked pale and tired. The sisters had arrived in Aydindril only hours ago, delivered by kind Sister Candace. She had gone already, and Kahlan tried not to feel abandoned among strangers—these women were her own kind, after all. Other Confessors, like her and Dennee, at last.

Even her apprehension and hunger could not entirely erase her pleasure in finally being where she belonged.

Then the Mother Confessor smiled, and Kahlan watched her, eyes drinking in everything about her—ready to learn.

"Fortunately," Mother Confessor Serena said, "we can help."

The lessons were hard and long, every day a struggle. Kahlan absorbed the knowledge, history and law, faster than she had ever done anything before in her life. She and Dennee soon had dark circles under their eyes, from nights spent pouring over Magda Searus's Commentaries, and those of dozens of later Mother Confessors—tales of war, of difficult choices, of the duties that formed the warp and weft of a Confessor's days.

And then one day, Mother Confessor Serena called Kahlan and Dennee to her office. They sat on hard chairs, hair freshly combed and the black dresses of novice Confessors making their skin look pale by comparison.

"The two of you are older than our Confessors usually are when we begin their training," Mother Confessor Serena said.

Kahlan flushed, quick to defend herself and Dennee. "We would have come sooner, but our father—" she said, then broke off. Dennee turned scared eyes to her, and Kahlan forbore to explain further. "The Sisters of the Light said—"

Mother Confessor Serena held up a hand. "I understand," she said. "Your father's actions, although regrettable, are no more than what one must expect from a Confessor's mate, released by her death. Your mother was a great loss to us all—we miss her very much."

Kahlan felt tears pricking her eyes—the Mother Confessor seemed too large and great a figure to give Kahlan and Dennee her sympathy.

(How many times had Kahlan wished her mother had lived, to guide and protect her—instead, there was only Kahlan between Dennee and the harsh world, and no one to protect Kahlan herself at all.)

"We must guard you both against temptation," Mother Confessor Serena said, business-like again. "The Keeper calls to all souls, but those with power are greater prizes in His eyes. With power comes responsibility."

"We understand," Kahlan said earnestly; she was ready to prove herself responsible in any way the Mother Confessor might require.

"Good," Mother Confessor Serena smiled. "We will begin at once."

Just what they would begin was apparent the next morning (in Aydindril, the rhythm of the Confessors' lives meant 'at once' could be used fluidly).

Kahlan and Dennee still shared a room, but the servant girl who woke them led each to different rooms near the top of one of the Palace's towers, across the hall from one another.

Wordlessly, Kahlan pressed Dennee's hand in hers, trying to reassure her little sister with touch. She had no better idea what to expect than Dennee could, but Kahlan vowed to herself that she would not disgrace her mother's memory.

If her mother had lived, she would have taken the sisters to Aydindril before now, and this place would already seem like their home.

The room Kahlan was left in was plain, a window letting in warm sunlight, but no furniture or decoration anywhere. At first, Kahlan waited in apprehension, then in increasing puzzlement.

She was standing by the window when Mother Confessor Serena entered, shutting the door behind her.

"Kahlan," she said warmly, and Kahlan bowed her head, respect and awe racing through her. "Come, my child. Let us speak together."

Mother Confessor Serena seated herself on the floor, inviting Kahlan to do the same.

Kahlan complied eagerly, desperate to prove herself.

"All power comes at a cost," Mother Confessor Serena said. "You know this already, I'm sure."

Kahlan wondered if she referred to those Kahlan had Confessed at her father's orders. She wished she could undo that now, but there was no undoing Confession. It held until death.

"Your powers came to you early, no doubt as a result of the trauma of your mother's death," Mother Confessor Serena went on. "For you, it is especially important that you learn to control yourself."

"But I can control my powers," Kahlan protested. "Mother Confessor, I'm trying—"

"I know," Mother Confessor Serena said, smiling warmly at Kahlan again. "And you're doing very well. But we can't take the risk that someday you will forget these lessons. That's why you're here." And she gestured at the bare room. "I want you to look out the window," she said, and Kahlan rose obediently. "What do you see?"

"Roofs…trees, swaying in the breeze…birds, flowers…the marketplace…" It was still early, and the market wasn't very crowded yet; Kahlan watched as one man bought a length of ribbon, smiling and laughing…

Then he met a woman, coming out of one of the houses…she caught his hands in hers, lifting her face to his…they kissed, and then the man held out the ribbon, showing it off…the woman threw her arms around him, then turned and held up her hair that the man might thread the ribbon through it…he tied a clumsy knot, and the couple walked on, their arms around each other…

"That is what a Confessor may never have," Mother Confessor Serena said gravely, and Kahlan jumped; she hadn't realized the Mother Confessor was so close behind her. "I want you to imagine being here, in this room, for the rest of your life—not able to feel the breeze, not able to hear children's laughter, or run through a field of wild flowers…all you can do is look out a window at what you can never experience."

Kahlan let the Mother Confessor's words fill her mind, until she thought of nothing else. A great sorrow threatened to overwhelm her, but she would stay strong—she was a Confessor.

Mother Confessor Serena put a gentle hand on Kahlan's shoulder. "That is the fate of Confessors," she said, "for we are the judges of men's souls, and their lives—and thus, we must always keep a part of ourselves separate from the simple joys of life."

For a moment, they stood there, looking out the window together—the Mother Confessor and the girl, just at the beginning of her life and her powers. All things should have seemed possible, yet Kahlan felt as though a door she hadn't known existed had just closed in her face.

Then Mother Confessor Serena sighed, and turned away. At the door, she said, "I am going to lock you in. I want you to meditate on all we have discussed, my child—I will return before the evening meal."

Kahlan bowed her head again, and said submissively, "Yes, Mother Confessor."

It was only after Mother Confessor Serena had gone that Kahlan thought to wonder if Dennee were undergoing this same meditation, across the hall.

All that day, although Kahlan quickly grew famished, and then almost faint with hunger, she prayed for Dennee, and for her mother's spirit, and for all her sister-Confessors, who had doubtless undergone this same cleansing process.

Yet when the Mother Confessor returned, Kahlan was staring longingly out the window again. In some ways, the dusk was even more beautiful than the morning had been. The sunset shed different colored lights that reached even Kahlan's skin, locked as she was in one of the Palace of Aydindril's tall towers.

All the different lights together were more stunning than the blind white light of noon, that erased all shadows.

"Have you given thought to what I spoke to you about?" Mother Confessor Serena asked.

Kahlan nodded, and the Mother Confessor smiled. "Good. We will repeat the exercise tomorrow, until I judge you to be ready to move on to the more physical aspects of keeping the peace."

Kahlan looked her inquiry, and Mother Confessor Serena clarified, "Defending yourself against the many enemies of justice. When the Creator places a knife in your hand, it is your duty to use it."

Kahlan returned to the empty room in the tower every day, and always the servant girl locked the door behind her. Sometimes the Mother Confessor came again, and others Kahlan was alone. She tried to make herself learn faster the lesson the Mother Confessor seemed so determined to teach her, but all that came to her in the tower room was a loneliness vast enough to make her previous trials seem easy.

At least then Dennee had been with her.

One night, she and Dennee curled together in bed, long after lights out, and Kahlan heard Dennee crying, softly.

"What is it?" she asked, genuinely puzzled. They were here, in Aydindril—where they belonged. What was there to cry over?

"I hate this," Dennee said quietly. "Every day…soon we'll starve. We are prisoners still. This is wrong."

Kahlan didn't pretend to misunderstand, but she said swiftly, "No. We must cleanse ourselves of—of the self-will that makes it so easy to misuse our powers. You heard what Mother Confessor Serena said—all Confessors have faced this. Do you want to disgrace Mother's memory?"

"Of course not," Dennee answered, and there the matter rested.

In time, Kahlan and Dennee were no longer sent to the tower rooms, and were taught instead to use the daggers no Confessor would willingly be without.

In time…Kahlan had almost forgotten those days.

They were part of her Life Before Richard, in any case—those memories were as though lacking in color, by comparison.

Now, with the more discerning sight of maturity, she wondered how much of Mother Confessor Serena's vehemence had been to make up for her own weakness, in failing to kill her Confessor son.

Kahlan was guilty of the same crime, and often she feared the same punishment. Was she doomed to be driven mad by love for Nicholas, the son she had never wanted?

And yet, if it were so, whom might she hurt? She and her children were the last Confessors, and she doubted Darken would allow her to live if she killed Nicholas, as Mother Confessor Serena had killed her son.

Which meant Nila would be safe, to live and return Richard to Kahlan, in the fullness of time.

Another duty remained for Kahlan—to train her own children in the same ritual of cleansing self-will that she had undergone.

And yet…

Kahlan couldn't tell if her reluctance to subject her children to that particular ritual stemmed from the same foolish sentimentality that had already betrayed her into becoming, however inadvertently, the mother of the growing family of Darken Rahl, the greatest tyrant the world had ever known, or some more impassive Confessor's instinct.

Without her Rada'Han, she thought bitterly, perhaps she would have been able to tell. As it was…

As it was, Darken would never allow the cleansing ritual (or perhaps he would, a thought that troubled Kahlan more than she cared to admit…), and so it behooved her to concentrate on those other skills required of Confessors.

There were huge tomes of history and law, no doubt lost in the ruins of Aydindril…but Darken would have copies. He must.

A Confessor was more than the absence of self-will.

As Kahlan herself surely had cause to know.