Pyricanthas. Sericanthas. Thas.

“Pyricanthas. Sericanthas. Thas.” is the Vaettir incantation for taming fire, taught to Annon by his uncle Tyrus when Annon was still a child. Its significance grows beyond a technique: the words connect Annon’s early hope of learning from Tyrus with years of disappointment, a secret he keeps from those closest to him, and the moments when he deliberately turns fire into a weapon. Their repeated appearance makes the incantation a marker of both control and the anger that can threaten to overwhelm it.

Origin and Meaning

Ten years before the scene in which Annon remembers the lesson, Tyrus came to him when he was not yet eight. Annon recalled his uncle as a figure of iron will, uncomfortable in the boy’s presence but willing to teach him about anger and demonstrate what it could do. Tyrus showed him how flames could spring from his fingertips and, most importantly, gave him the Vaettir words that could tame fire: “Pyricanthas. Sericanthas. Thas.”

The lesson became bound up with Annon’s hope that Tyrus would take him to Kenatos and teach him the lore of the Paracelsus. Annon practiced controlling both flame and anger, waiting for an invitation that never came. The years without one changed his feelings from disappointment to shame, guilt, and resentment. By twelve, he had abandoned the hope of going to Kenatos and committed himself instead to learning the Druidecht ways. His progress was rapid: at sixteen he earned the right to wear a talisman, unusually young for an inhabitant of Mirrowen.

Yet the fire lesson did not become part of the Druidecht knowledge Annon chose to pursue. Rejecting Tyrus also meant rejecting his uncle’s teaching, and Annon believed that he should never have been taught to command fire. He had not used the power for several years and told neither Reeder nor anyone else what had happened. The incantation thus survived as a private, shame-laden memory, even as the skill itself remained within his reach.

A Secret Shared Between Siblings

When Annon reveals his fireblood to Hettie, the incantation becomes evidence of a bond neither sibling can establish by assertion alone. Hettie asks him to show the persecuted secret he claims they share. Annon answers without speaking: blue flames move across his fingers, and the three Vaettir words follow in his thoughts. Hettie knows them too. She touches her glowing palm to his and recognizes the magic in his blood.

Her response clarifies the contrast between their experiences. Fireblood is persecuted in these lands, but the Romani do not persecute those who possess it; they ensure that Hettie learns the words at the appropriate age, and her ability increases her value. For Annon, by contrast, the power has been hidden behind secrecy and shame. The shared incantation confirms their kinship while exposing how differently they were raised around the same dangerous inheritance. It also sharpens Annon’s sense of betrayal: Tyrus had kept from him the knowledge that Hettie, his sister, possessed the same ability.

Fire as Deliberate Action

Annon later speaks the incantation during the encounter with a Preachán who intends to rob and murder the travelers. Before using his power, Annon identifies the trap: the travelers look like easy prey, no caravans are present to interrupt the attack, and the Preachán expects them to reveal where their purses are kept. He then invokes the Vaettir words and sends flames into the wreckage of wagons, barrels, and crates. Hettie follows his lead, setting other piles alight. The incantation marks a change from concealed ability to open resistance, and from a private family secret to power used jointly with the sister who shares it.

At Erasmus’s dwelling, Annon applies the same words to a different problem. Rather than sending fire outward at attackers, he directs it over metal in an attempt to soften it. He holds the object while the flame warms it, and Hettie warns him as she watches his face. The scene shows the incantation serving not only as a weapon but as a means of working on a resistant material. In both cases, however, the fire is closely bound to Annon’s emotional state: he deliberately feeds the flame with anger, making control an active effort rather than an automatic guarantee.

Repetition, Control, and Risk

The incantation returns in the defense of an ancient Dryad tree, where Annon’s fire is directed against Boeotians attacking the grove. At one point, flames leap from his fingertips toward a man wielding an ax; Annon then rushes into the grove and turns the fire against the other attackers. Later, as the spirits of the woods intervene to protect the tree, Annon invokes the same words again. Their aid heightens his senses, and he sends fire at an attacker without setting the nearby trees alight. Here the spell’s association with taming fire is borne out in a precise distinction: the flames strike a target while the surrounding grove remains untouched.

That control is not effortless. When the attackers threaten the tree and Annon is drawn into the fight at close quarters, he invokes the incantation once more and releases a controlled firestorm. Yet his own account of the moment is one of mounting danger: his heart pounds, his ears ring, and he feels himself losing himself in the magic. The repeated phrase therefore does not simply promise mastery. It accompanies both careful direction and the risk that intense anger and power will carry Annon beyond his ability to govern them.

Across the novel’s recurring scenes, the three words gather meanings that remain in tension. They are Tyrus’s legacy, a lesson Annon resents and cannot wholly discard; a private secret that becomes the proof of his relationship with Hettie; and a practical means of defending others, confronting danger, or altering metal. Their repetition also gives the fire scenes a recognizable verbal hinge: Annon thinks or speaks the same formula, but the circumstances and consequences differ. The incantation names the possibility of command, while Annon’s anger continually tests whether command can endure.