I noticed in White Knight is that Harry uses Elaine's True Name to make contact with her when she's under attack from the Skavis.
Harry makes a ritual conduit by conjuring up an old Sight memory of her, but it's 16ish years out of date. So he fills out his construct of her by trying to understand the pain she's gone through since they knew each other, and filling out/updating his mental image based on that.
Half of her life had gone by since she had given him that True Name, which supposedly stop working after your personality changes enough. And somehow it still worked. In retrospect, I find that kind of odd. It's a ~16 year old Name, founded on the solidity of the identity of an about-to-have-a-formative-trauma teenager. I can think of three explanations.
The first, least likely possibility to my mind is that Harry really did just figure out the last 16 years of her life well enough to update her Name with on-the-fly guesswork. What must have been near a decade of existing with the Fae somehow didn't come with it's own unique trials and scars that he couldn't personally imagine to insert into her Name. Even if Summer's got a better reputation, they're still
Fae. It doesn't scan to me.
The second, what seems to be more likely outcome is that Elaine simply hasn't changed that much over the intervening time. Perhaps she hasn't changed at all, and any difficulty Harry had with the spell was because of his adjustments, not in spite of them. I don't know what Nemfection does to mortals, but dragging our ability to change to a halt seems perverse enough to qualify. Stasis would have also been very appealing to a recently freed thrall who would likely slip into madness over the coming weeks as her mind tore itself apart.
(Also, possible Kumori connection? Bringing change to a halt is the essence of how she saves that guy with necromancy.)
She would have then fled to the Summer Court, to have her "mind healed" by Aurora. If Aurora had such an ability, it seems to me like the White Council would have bargained handsomely to have that on retainer for themselves, if absolutely no one else. But even after Peabody screws up everyone's head, they have to rely on their own fumbling inexperience to fix things, instead of trying to even get lessons from a more powerful mind healer. Like the new Summer Lady who happens to be a huge fan of one of their wardens.
More likely, it seems to me that the Senior Counsel is aware that the Summer Lady has no such abilities. Probably after asking her directly and paying for that specific information in vain hopes of tackling this exact problem.
Currently the only people who have all of the information about how bad Elaine's mental whammy was,
and the finer details of how much damage a mental whammy like that does, are Harry and Elaine. And Harry is Harry.
The third possibility is what Harry uses to shock her fully alert in White Night. He calls her Name once and her first name a few times and gets a response, but she's still drowning under the psychic assault. What fully snaps her out of it is when he gives
his own name as part of a command.
Elaine Lilian Mallory! I called, and in my head, my voice rumbled like thunder. I am Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, and I bid thee hear me! Hear my voice, Elaine!
It's very reminiscent of how he compelled HWWB in Cold Days, but the way it's written is ambiguous. It could be that throwing his will behind Elaine's full name is waking her up, or it could be that throwing his will beyond his own is doing the job.
Or it could be some combination of the above. Elaine's stasis allowing her Name to land, forming a conduit for
Harry's Name to compel Nemesis to act.
Perhaps even, by sheer stumbling idiot fluke, screwing up one of Nemesis' plans by forcefully compelling it to blast it's own agent into the parking lot. That
would be very Harry.
It's all circumstantial and speculation, but the lady is shady.
Show Posts