Wasn't this book cool? It's my favorite of the serie, and one of the best fantasy books I've read.

My Nit/Question, is: 'how come Alfred got into the area with all the sleeping people?'

I mean, shouldn't he have flown through the death gate into the sea?

Well, it IS Alfred...

Who knows? To speculate wildly:

-> Samah could've put a spell around Death's Gate that would immediately bring any Sartan straight to the stasis room. Considering the situation and what Samah expected the foreign Sartan to do (fix everyone's problems ASAP), this would make a lot of sense.

-> Samah might've DESIGNED Death's Gate to do just that. As to why it didn't work any other time: every other time Alfred went through DG he was in a Patryn ship, with all those protective runes on the outside, that might've interfered with DG's 'programming.' All except for him arriving in Fire Sea. I don't know how he got in then. But there isn't a stasis room in the Nexus anyway, so maybe that still stands.