The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
A Fallen scorned (GS spoilers)
Mira:
--- Quote ---
That doesn't mean that Nicodemus/Anduriel would know about Lasciel's revenge plot against Harry. At the end of SmF, Harry told Nicodemus, "Lasciel's shadow doesn't live here anymore." We find out later that Harry was wrong about this, but it was what Harry believed at the time, and I'm quite sure Nicodemus was able to note Harry's sincerity. I think it's pretty likely that if Harry actually had found a way to permanently remove Lasciel's shadow, that would have the effect of breaking his connection to Lasciel's coin, possibly by severing the principle of contagion permitting Lasciel's whispering communication. If Nicodemus compromised Church security (...again...) and stole the coin, Lasciel may well have decided not to tell Nicodemus that her line of communication with Harry was back open--we're told that Lasciel and Anduriel generally don't work together.
--- End quote ---
Harry was right, Lasciel's shadow didn't live in his head anymore, she had become "Lash." She had changed, and even if she was still there, at that moment she was still gravely wounded..
Vairelome:
--- Quote from: Mira on December 11, 2011, 01:03:47 PM --- Harry was right, Lasciel's shadow didn't live in his head anymore, she had become "Lash." She had changed, and even if she was still there, at that moment she was still gravely wounded..
--- End quote ---
No, that's not what Harry meant. At that point in SmF, Harry believed that Lash had effectively committed "suicide" to save him in the Raith Deeps, and was therefore "dead" and gone (for whatever values "dead" has for an angelic shadow/mental construct).
Harry believed that Lash was not pining for the fjords; she'd passed on; this shadow was no more; she had ceased to be. Lash had expired and gone to meet her Maker; she's a stiff; bereft of life, she rests in peace. If she hadn't been a mental construct that lived only in Harry's head, she'd be pushing up the daisies; her metabolic processes are now history; she's off the twig; she's kicked the bucket; she's shuffled off her mortal coil; run down the curtain and (re-)joined the choir invisible. Lash is an ex-parrotshadowy resident of Harry's mind.
But now she's back, though Harry may not realize it yet, depending on whether he correctly deduced the identity of the "parasite" mentioned in the cave on Demonreach.
Paladino:
While I personally belive a denarian shouldn't be able to influence a possible host, beside the construct they put in their mind to tempt them. We have no proof of it. So maybe we are doing a lot of noise about Lasciel not being able to whisper for Harry, when it's possible that it's completely under her power to do so..
Also, there are a lot of explanations that could allow Lasciel do whisper like that, Nic and the other nickleheads could have helped her by recovering her coin and making some kind of spell, Lucifer could have helped the Denarians again...
I don't think there is such thing as the church not warding the coins right.. While it was under Harry wardens, he could acces hellfire and Lash and Harry kept saying that if he wanted he could summon the coin at any momment... So, I dont see Harry warding of the coin doing any good... Maybe only stopping other person to pick up the coin..
Vairelome:
Well, here's the logical chain supporting the theory:
We have WoJ that Lasciel was in GS, but not referred to by name. The majority theory is that Lasciel was the whispering shadow, both because you can construct a logical set of motivations that would cause Lasciel to act in that way, and because there aren't any alternative appearances that make more sense. Therefore, for what follows, we are assuming that Lasciel was the whispering shadow.
Logically, if Lasciel was the whispering shadow, she would have to actually have the ability to whisper in Harry's head. Yes, this is obvious, but it's also important. If you go back and check the scene at the end of DM from Harry's first contact with Lasciel's coin up to the point where he encloses it in the circle and buries it in his basement, I seem to remember rather a lot of Lasciel talking in his head, even when he no longer had skin contact with the coin. This mental contact abruptly cut off when the warding circle closed around the coin.
(The counterargument would be that this was all proto-Lash, the shadow Lasciel had just stuck in Harry's head, and the whispering cut off as part of the shadow's long con, tricking Harry into thinking--wrongly--that his direct, whisper-link connection to Lasciel had been cut off by the effects of the warding circle. This doesn't work, however, because it would completely undercut the entire Lash plotline, and JB has been quite clear that the Lash plotline was legitimate--Harry did manage to change Lasciel's shadow into Lash. Therefore, we can conclude that Harry's ward was effective, and it did cut off direct contact between him and Lasciel.)
Now, if Harry's ward was effective, and Lasciel's shadow was able to transform into Lash in the absence of Lasciel's supervision, how was Lasciel later able to contact Harry again in Changes? If Salacia's theory at the beginning of this thread is correct, Lasciel's whispers began in TC, and continued until the missing scene in Changes that was revealed in GS. Logically, we must conclude that Lasciel's coin was no longer behind a working warding circle, potentially as far back as sometime during TC.
We know that Harry dug up the coin after Lash "died" in the Raith Deeps at the end of WN, and handed it over to Father Forthill for safekeeping. We don't know its exact movements from that point, but since Father Forthill has been KotC support for many years and knew very well the significance and danger of the coin, we should expect that he was extremely careful. On the other hand, Nicodemus has made a hobby of recovering coins from the Church for about 2000 years, with moderate success.
Nicodemus first learns that his plot to corrupt Harry using Lasciel's coin has completely failed at the end of SmF, when he tries to use Lasciel's shadow to defeat Harry just off the shore of Demonreach. Harry tricks him into thinking it worked for a moment, and then utterly horrifies Nicodemus by revealing that the shadow isn't there anymore. Harry works really hard at finishing him off right then, but we have WoJ that Nicodemus escaped, and we'll see him again in the book after CD.
So. You're Nicodemus at the end of SmF, and you've just discovered that Lasciel's coin did not do the job of removing Harry from his current mission--"saving the world, one act of random destruction at a time." We have no text or WoJ evidence to tell us what Nicodemus was up to after the end of SmF, so this is all purely conjecture. However, it would make sense for Nicodemus to do what he's done before, infiltrating the Church to recover one of the coins. If he did so, and was successful at removing Lasciel's coin from whatever warding circle held it, the timing makes perfect sense for Lasciel to start whispering to Harry again midway through TC, as in Salacia's theory.
To be sure, this chain of logic involves guesswork and supposition as far as the activities of Nicodemus and Lasciel. On the other hand, I don't think there's any suggestion in the books or WoJs that it's NOT right (please let me know if you think of any), and all of the actions taken in the theory are consistent with the known knowledge, motivations, and past practices of the entities involved, as far as I can tell.
TheCuriousFan:
A thought, what are the odds that Nicodemus has been focusing on getting coins back since Death Masks? He was down to having Diedre as the only Denarian following him, what are the odds he got Lasciel's coin back in the time between White Night and Turn Coat?
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