The Time of the Dark

Gil Patterson, a graduate student, and Rudy Solis, an auto mechanic, are pulled from their modern lives and dropped into Darwath, a world on the other side of the Void, by Ingold Inglorion, a wizard fleeing an ancient enemy known only as the Dark. The Dark are rising again after ages of dormancy, and Ingold has come to recruit help -- including two people from a world with no magic at all -- in a fight to keep humanity from being exterminated or enslaved. Gil and Rudy must find out whether they have anything to offer a war they don't understand. The first novel in Barbara Hambly's Darwath trilogy.