The cold that filled the room took no shape at first, only a pressure behind the eyes and a weight against the ears, the way a storm announces itself before the first drop of rain falls. Then it gathered, slow and deliberate, into the same tall, still figure Rama remembered from the hill country mound. Its features never quite settled into anything you could describe afterward. It was a presence that filled far more of the room than its visible edges suggested it should.
"You kept me waiting outside your walls a long while," the eldest said, its voice carrying the same flat, patient quality Rama remembered, neither warm nor unkind, simply old beyond any scale that meant much to the people listening. "I understand the caution. I would have done the same, in your position, a very long time ago, when I still had a position to be cautious from."
