This question contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[A strange possibility just occurred to me, having just finished The Betrayer's Bane and remembering the title of the first book, The Mountains Rise. The mountain range was created by Emma as she exercised archmage abilities, but were the mountains actually the remnants of Emma after "she lay down... surrendering her body of stone and rejoining the earth?" Or just the mundane result of her manipulating the geology? (hide spoiler)]