Este é O Tempo do Escuro por Barbara Hambly.
A protagonista é uma dama, Gil Patterson , não um homem, mas, além disso, o livro corresponde à sua descrição, e você se lembrou da capa perfeitamente.
A cena em que Gil encontra o mago é:
Wrapping it about her, she padded silently into the dark kitchen, her feet finding their way easily. Her hand found the light switch by touch in the darkness and flicked it up.
The wizard Ingold was sitting at the kitchen table.
Ela sabe quem é o mago porque já o conheceu em um sonho. Os morcegos gigantes são descritos por Ingold como:
"What can I say of the Dark, Gil? What can I say that you don't know already? That they are the sharks of night? That they pull the flesh from the bones, or the blood from the flesh, or the soul and spirit from the living body and let it stumble mindlessly to an eventual death from starvation? That they ride the air in darkness, hunt in darkness, and that fire or light or even a good bright moon will keep them away? Would that tell you what they are?"
Os ninhos de The Dark são de fato chamados Nests na história e são alcançados por longas escadas:
"I—I dreamed of them." Gil stumbled on the words, finding it unexpectedly more difficult to speak of that first forerunning dream to one who understood than to one who did not "Before I ever saw them, before I ever knew what they were. I dreamed about a—a vault, a cellar—with arches going in all directions. The floor was black and smooth, like glass; and in the middle of that black floor was a slab of granite that was new and rough, because nobody ever walked on it. You said they came from—from beneath the ground."
"Indeed," the wizard said, looking at her with an alert, speculative curiosity. "You seem to have sensed their coming far ahead of its time. That may mean something, though at the moment I'm not sure . .. Yes, that was the Dark, or, rather, the blocked-up entrance to one of their Nests. Under that granite slab—and I know the one you're talking about—is a stairway, a stairway going downward incalculable depths into the earth. It was with the stairways, I believe, that it all began.
O Tempo das Trevas é o primeiro livro da trilogia Darwath . Os outros dois livros são